【单选题】

The collapse ofEnron, the largest bankruptcy inAmerican history, has rung out a banner year forAmerican business failures. InEurope, the fallout from the Swissair and Sabena insolvencies continues. In the current global slump, more companies are likely to go under. Now is a perfect time to reconsider how to handle such failures: let them sink, or give them a chance to swim

InAmerica, bankruptcy has come to mean a second chance for bust businesses. The famous "Chapter 11" law aims to give a company time to get back on its feet, by shielding it from debt payments and prodding banks to negotiate with their debtor. It even allows an insolvent company to receive fresh finance after it goes bust. On the other side of theAtlantic, when companies stumble, almost as much effort is spent in fingering the guilty as in trying to salvage a viable business.British and French laws, for example, can make a failing company’s directors face criminal penalties and personal liability. Moreover, bankers have the power, at the first sign of trouble, to push a company into the arms of the receivers. Some modest changes are afoot, however.Britain is considering moves that would bring its rules closer toAmerica’s. New laws in Germany should also make it easier to revive sick companies, although trade unions still have their say.
But even with the arrival of the euro and moves towards a single financial market, going bust inEurope is a strictly local affair. Long beforeAmerica had a single currency, theAmerican constitution provided uniform bankruptcy laws, observesElizabeth Warren of the Harvard Law School.Europe’s patchwork of national laws, according toBillBrandt of "Development Specialists", a consultancy, inhibits lending and makes it difficult to fix ailing firms.
Transatlantic insolvencies are even harder, as aBelgian-based software company, Lernout and Hauspie, discovered this year. ItsAmerican reorganization plan was thwarted by aBelgian judge, who ordered a sale of the firm’s assets.As theEuropean Union inches toward greater harmonization, should it try to mimicAmerica
Critics ofChapter 11 think not. They argue thatAmerica’s bankruptcy system is wasteful, lets failed managers go unpunished, and gives some companies an unfair advantage. InChapter 11, admittedly, lawyers and advisers gobble up fees, but a recent study argues that the fees are no larger than those for most mergers and acquisitions. One common complaint, that managers enjoy the high life while creditors go begging, fails to stand up to the data fromAmerica’s previous wave of bankruptcies in the early 1990s. Stuart Gilson of the HarvardBusiness School found that more than two-thirds of top managers were ousted within two years of a bankruptcy filing. More troubling is that someAmerican firms seem to enjoy second and third trips to bankruptcy court, cheekily termedChapters 22 and 33. Some see this as evidence that, ton often, they useChapter 11 to keep running.But there is more to the story.
The ease ofEnron bankruptcy______.
A、triggers grand-scale economic recession inAmerica
B．affects the Swissair and Sabena inEurope
C．marks the most dramatic economic situation inAmerica
D．gets more companies into trouble around the world