Let's put the losses in perspective . . .

Enron currently stands as the U.S.'s largest corporate bankruptcy in terms of lost value -- about $66 billion. But don't think it takes a combination of fraud, deregulation and complicity from the bean counters for disasters of this magnitude to strike equity holders.

In terms of lost investor wealth, Enron actually compares favorably to other flameouts. EMC, Cisco Systems (CSCO:Nasdaq) and General Electric (GE:NYSE) each "lost" over $100 billion in market cap from December 2000 to their 2002 lows. From the perspective of market-cap loss, Lucent (LU:NYSE) shareholders would also have been collectively better off owning Enron instead.

Even (once) mighty Microsoft (MSFT:Nasdaq) -- with a market capitalization of $266 billion as of Thursday's close -- has suffered enormous losses. From its split-adjust peak of $60, to its post-bubble low near $20, more than $300 billion in Microsoft shareholder valued has disappeared.

So compared with any of these market crash calamities, Enron loss is relatively minor. That is truly astounding.

And it's not just the tech sector where shareholder losses accrue: From December 2000 to the present day, pharmaceutical giant Merck (MRK:NYSE) has dropped $120 billion in value. Even oil colossus Exxon Mobil (XOM:NYSE) lost over $105 billion of market cap from November 2000 to July 2002, before rallying in conjunction with rising oil prices.