n. A fiscal policy or business strategy that relies on dubious accounting practices, overly-optimistic economic forecasts, and unsustainably high levels of spending.
2002
Democratic National Committee staffers urge candidates to run against "Enronomics," an albatross even worse than recession that they hope to hang around Republican necks.
2002
Hasta linguini to the Enron scandal; in normal times, this saga of scamming, looting, and finally meltdown might play like Whitewater and the savings and loan collapse rolled into one. From 1993 to 2000, the company and its employees gave George W. $2 million—coconuts next to Whitewater's peanuts. Its chief, Kenneth Lay, huddled with Vice President Cheney to draft a national energy policy based on the same Enronomics as its own disastrous business strategy.
2001 (earliest)
Surely what happened to the employees of Enron can only be described as trickle down Enronomics! That's exactly what Bush is doing to the average worker in America.
This term began life in the rough-and-tumble world of partisan U.S. politics, where it was used by Democrats as an insulting reference to Republican economic policies (see the earliest citation).