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No, Enron went down at the end of 2001, just a few months later than 9/11. That scandal and creative bookkeeping (that would be a remarkable word if it had two p's!) took their principal accounting firm Arthur Andersen down in 2002, since obviously they didn't do their job (and probably were criminally negligent).
This all connects to the 2008 meltdown, in a way, because it was a warning that was sounded,but missed. Arthur Andersen had been the principal oversight for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. When it went down in 2002, the government used it own accounting office the GAO to have a look at these two companies, and didn't like what they found. By 2005, before the housing bubble had burst, this resulted in a big warning about Fannie and Freddie and CDOs and mortgage backed derivatives and big exposure by the government to bad housing debt and overleveraged housing related "securities." Greenspan at the time made the warnings, but at the same time refused to allow the SEC to do anything about it, saying essentially that it was a private business problem (apparently he thought Fannie and Freddie would just listen to him and get totally out of the housing reated securites business). Short story: they didn't.
The story of how the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a woman named Brooksely Born, tried to regulate derivatives in the late 1990's and was shot down by Greenspan, Rubin and Summers, and ultimately congress which had its finger in its ears, is told here in this Frontline special you should watch.
Born got her chance to say "I told you so" later. Of course it was too late. Greenspan had been out of office for 4 years and the economy had been in meltdown for two.
Anyway, the rest of it is history. Bear Sterns was saved by the Feds in early 2008, but when Lehman was going down, the Feds decided to let it. Its collapse touched off such a financial storm that the Feds had to bail out AIG and pass TARP as an emergency in late 2008, and off we go.
The point was that the shenanigans Enron got up to occurred during the 90's and weren't prevented during the 90's. I guess you could say that "failing to heed the warning of Enron" was a mistake of the naughties. The rest of your commentary is pretty much correct.
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Excuse me? These people are not going to be paying for my retirement. These people are not even going to pay for their own retirements. These are not engineers, nuclear physicists and heart surgeons who are sneaking across the border. They are, by even their own boosters' words, the poorly-educated people who are willing to do the minimum wage jobs that "nobody else wants to do." Except you don't build a world-class economy on the labor of people like that. But they cost the social services of your country just as much as a Ph.D. polymer chemist from China, here on an H1-B visa. More.
This is the way to destroy an economy. Places like New Zealand don't even let you emigrate if you're over 40, even if you've got a Ph.D. Because you probably won't pay for yourself before you retire. Our situation with the poorly educated from Mexico is that same problem, but in spades.
The stuff about jobs nobody else wants to do, is B.S., also. In this economy, there are plenty of U.S. citizens who'd do any job. I've a friend in the NYC metro area (Flushing) with a masters' degree in history, who can't find work as a secretary or a cook! He passed the state department civil service exam (no mean feat) a few years ago, but as a while male, he's been screwed by affirmative action. And the manual labor and blue collar jobs are all held down by "undocumented" people from Mexico. So it goes.
On this one though you're wrong. Ummm... not sure how much I want to get into this - and it's obviously a discussion best saved for the Annex but:
*For the most part illegal immigrants to US are people who pay taxes and social security. At the same time most of them will never collect their social security benefits either because most of them will remain illegal (i.e. not eligible) or because they will move back to their country of origin. Most of them are NOT over 40 yrs old.
*"You don't build a world-class economy on the labor of people like that" - not sure what you mean. To the extent that low skill people earn less than skilled people and to the extent that a lot of illegal immigrants are low skilled I guess their low earnings will drag down the average. So what? That doesn't mean that their presence actually lowers skilled people's wages. In fact, if skilled and unskilled labor are complementary - and in fact there's evidence that they are - the presence of more unskilled workers will boost the wages of skilled workers. As in fact there is evidence that it does.
*The cost of illegal immigrants on the social services of US is trivial, greatly exaggerated and more than fully off set by the taxes they pay. That's one thing you never hear from anti-immigration people; the fact that even illegals (vast majority of them anyway) pay taxes just as native workers do, and that by far they under utilize the social services that are available (mostly due to the fact that they're afraid that if they do they will get caught and deported)
*The situation with New Zealand is completely different. Most illegal immigrants aren't over 40. And what you're talking about is New Zealand's legal immigrants. So the "problem" with Mexico is completely different.
*I seriously doubt your friend's inability to find a job as a cook has anything to do with affirmative action. As a secretary ... maybe, but even there I'm skeptical. Affirmative action is hardly a binding constraint on low skill jobs (since a significant portion of low skilled workers are ethnic minorities it is trivial for employers to fill any implicit quotas) and very rarely enforced (not surprising since most poor people don't have the resources to pursue legal action to enforce it). And hell, if I ran a construction company or something similar I'd be weary about hiring someone with a history degree - just cuz they know the causes of World War I doesn't mean they know how to hammer in a nail. I think the problem for your friend is the history degree (trust me, I can relate) not illegal immigrants. But that's a problem with the academic job market, one which illegal immigrants are notably absent from.
*Overall the presence of immigrants has a positive effect on wages of almost all classes of native workers. The exception is the very unskilled native workers (those w/o a high school degree) but even there the effect is small (a few percent points in short run, almost nothing in long run)
*If you could move somewhere else to get triple or quadruple your present salary, would you do it? Even if illegal immigrants do have some negative effect on the wages and employment of natives - and that's a very big "if", the opposite effect is more likely - the size of that effect is simply dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of the increase in the standard of living of some very very very poor people who, thanks to the ability to immigrate, have a chance at a half way decent life. That also counts for something, unless you think that only people born or naturalized in the US matter and everyone else's a dog.