Still No Clarity at Enron

Battered energy giant Enron (ENE Quote) strove to get back in the good graces of investors Tuesday when it released third-quarter operating earnings that met estimates.

Notably, Enron also claimed its third-quarter numbers offered improved financial disclosure to investors, who have long worried about the quality of earnings at the energy trader. But earnings numbers arguably got murkier, as the company removed a key line item from its income statement and took more than $2 billion in charges and writedowns that could lead to a credit downgrade.

Equally worrying, even as European trading revenue surged, profits in the region stagnated as energy prices mostly stabilized. If this phenomenon spreads to the U.S., the company's earnings growth targets would be hard to achieve. (Enron makes most of its money by profiting off the movement of energy prices.) ...