The NYT began publishing legitimately scathing articles about Enron and effectively accusing outright fraud in January 2002 [1].
Contrast to the kid-gloves puff-piece the NYT published about SBF recently.
If we take the NYT as a bellwether for what the "elite" and well-connected want known, it's quite clear that the treatment is very, very different between the two collapse stories.
My personal feeling is that SBF is not permanently safe. Like Epstein, occasionally you have to sacrifice one of your own to sate the appetite of the masses and to quell the tendency of conspiracy theories to be demonstrated correct. Depending on how uncontrollable narratives evolve on this story, it's possible they'll need to throw him under the bus.
For the moment, however, it's clear they're treating this as Not-Enron. He's safe for now. We'll see.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/28/us/enron-s-many-strands-e...
We should not, nor should we even take the relation between NYT and elite opinion as relatively consistent over time.
It really only seems that way because people have amnesia about the timelines involved in accountability for similar events; Enron collapsed in December 2001 (well, that’s when the bankruptcy was filed, Ken Lay resigned as CEO in January 2002.) It wasn’t until February that there were hearings in the Senate. The first indictment related to it was in March ’02 – for Arthur Andersen, Enron’s accounting firm, who were convicted in June ’02. Enron’s CFO was indicted in October ’02 and convicted in a plea bargain in January ’04, and Ken Lay wasn’t arrested until July ’04 and was convicted in May ’06.
SBF being out free three whole weeks after the SBF collapse is not strong evidence that he will never see a day in jail and other accountability. So far, that have been public, there were separate probes of FTX and/or FTX.US by at least CFTC, SEC, and DOJ in progress before the collapse, and there are more institutions in more countries targeting FTX and its principals now.