To please the Street, and to make these evanescent windfalls appear recurring, Enron had to keep expanding into new (and ever more implausible) markets — a costly proposition that required the company to assume ever more debt. And here's the rub: Enron was not merely a toll-collector, a middleman skimming the vig off every transaction. It was a "counterparty" — that is, technically, it bought and then sold all the underlying goods that were traded under its aegis.

Bankers have objected to Microsoft’s expressed desire to obtain service fees, called "vigs" after a bookie term, for financial transactions conducted over the Web.

Nathan Myrhvold, Microsoft's chief technology officer, confirms that Microsoft hopes to get a "vig," or vigorish, on every transaction over the Internet that uses Microsoft's technology, though he says in some cases Microsoft's share could come from a onetime software licencing fee.