What are you talking about. It was a massive drag on the California economy while they existed. They were literally shutting the power system for millions of people down to jack the price.

Destroyed the pensions of many people, though.

Should the government have waited for another half a dozen “Enrons” before acting? The whole point of regulation is to avoid such occurrences not as an “I told you so”

And how much time lapsed between identifying the problem, notification, committee meetings, proposal, final draft, voting, and enforcement?

How much business was lost through the two summers of rotating brown-outs? Datacenter outages? Maybe Enron didn't impact America, but thanks to America's pro-business, anti-consumer laws, Enron really hurt California.

Sure, bad things happen. But there's a trade-off between regulatory burden and economic vibrancy and adaptability. We all know that taxi regulations sort of existed because a lot of tourists would get taken advantage of. But then, the taxi companies and politicians exploited it to promote local monopolies and enforced it with limited edition, expensive taxi medallions that prevented people from starting up legitimate cab companies to compete with the incumbents.

That sort of thing happens all the time and that opportunity cost is not often talked about.

OP was thinking of Dodd Frank.

....nor regulators.

Regulation isn't about informing people what the rules are, it's about people proving they are following the rules.