Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room_720p(480P)

In spite of some Errol Morris-style gimmickry, this is an engrossing documentary of how a corrupt company managed to pull the wool over a lot of gullible eyes before crashing and burning. It's an interesting story, told well. For me, it focused a bit too much on the pure criminality of what happened. To me it seems there are inherent problems in companies whose only business is speculating on products, as opposed to actually having a product or service of their own. The movie doesn't really get much into the larger context though, and I would have liked more of a sense of how Enron fits into the larger financial world than I got. Particularly since by the time I saw the film the whole economy had collapsed. This movie showed the dangerous of a corrupt corporate culture, but it's as though they just shone a flashlight on Enron and stuff near it, rather than a spotlight that could have lit up the whole thing. I'm not saying this isn't a good movie, just that a larger context would have made it a better one.

source: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Really enjoyed Alex Gibney's Scientology:Going Clear doc recently but this is not as engrossing or as dynamically told. Its very nuts n bolts. Greed is good, this guys is a repressed geek, etc etc which over the course gets repetitive and dull. Who knew large corps had shady practices in a larger unregulated and new futures industry, its like the crashes of the 80s never happened but of course we are doomed to repeat history.

"Ask why" was Enron's enormously ironic marketing slogan for many years preceding its collapse, even as company officials ignored, shut out, and denigrated the few analysts, reporters, and employees who paused to ask why and how exactly the company was making money claimed in its earnings reports. The film will make you shake your head at the gall of Enron, from its self-assured, overly confident executives to the merciless conduct of the energy traders bred within the company's cut-throat culture. The film discusses the casualties of the Enron fallout, from its employees, its stockholders, retirees who held Enron shares, the entire state of California and Gov. Gray Davis himself. The film provides a scathing criticism of capitalism unleashed, an aspect that I believe is most overlooked in the wake of Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco. The film, as did most media reports, focused on the personal conduct of the key players, the high-power executives now mired in civil and criminal proceedings: CEO Jeffrey Skilling, CEO Kenneth Lay (now deceased), and CFO Andrew Fastow. While the conceit and deceit of these executives cannot be over-stated, so much emphasis on their individual culpability distracts from the overall culture of communal greed and reckless hype that saturated all of society during the late 1990s and early 2000s. In the film, Sherron Watkins, a former Enron VP considered by some to be a whistleblower, commented: "Enron should not be viewed as an aberration, something that can't happen somewhere else . . . It can happen again." Right now, we still live in the shadow of Enron, with heavy-handed oversight and finger-wagging politicians. The real challenge will be 10 or 20 years from now, when the country is experiencing its next major economic boom. Will analysts do their job and demand to see proper balance sheets? Will regulators turn a blind eye to questionable accounting practices? Will shareholders even care that puppetmasters may be manipulating the skyrocketing numbers? Will ANYONE care so long as gobs of money are being made, until its too late? We humans have a very short memory, and history tends to repeat itself. I would rate the documentary higher, except that I found much of the inserted pop-culture clips to be unnecessary, distracting, and gratuitous (five minutes of strippers?).

The collapse of the Enron Corporation is fascinating to anyone with even rudimentary understanding of the economic practices of American corporations. It isn't surprising that several books describing the collapse are available. However, what is surprising is that a film would be adapted from one of said books. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room takes a different approach to the documentary genre, as most documentaries are independent of a literary source or spawn one of their own. I'm not inclined to say this is the reason the film is not only entertaining and informative even to those who lack knowledge of business practices, but it probably does contribute to its effectiveness. It may be difficult for non-American viewers to completely understand, but the psychological appeal is evident. I had to watch this film for my Business Ethics course in University. The film describes the formation of Enron under the leadership of the ignominious Ken Lay. Jeffrey Fastow is Ken's disciple and he hires one of his own. He is graduate student, Andrew Fastow, who helps him facilitate Enron's practice of hiding debt in smaller companies. Fastow later becomes CEO of the company. The film also mentions the Lu Pei interlude, which resulted in 250 million dollars exiting the company for Pei's private consumption. The film also describes Kenneth Lay's position as CEO until his resignation in 2002. In addition, the film describes Enron's "power play" to manipulate electrical energy prices in California, Enron's relationship with the Bush family, Enron's fixation with imaginary profits, Enron's relationship with Arthur Anderson ,and Enron's "rank n' yank" system of eliminating "bad" employees. If what I've described sounds like an overview of a non-documentary film, then I've communicated effectively. With only narration, interviews, and commentary, Peter Coyote and Alex Gibney create a documentary which transcends its genre into a legal thriller of comparison to Michael Clayton. While such a comparison may seem unjust, and it probably is, this film's source material allows it to unfold unlike most documentaries. Skilling's fixation with Enron's continued success, embodied with his declaration "I am Enron", to Lu Pei's swindling of corporate money, and the brutal end create a documentary with a distinctive narrative structure. The film even displays conclusion by stating the end to its villain-protagonists and the harm that they caused to their underlings. Additionally, the film provides analysis of Enron's policies through consultation of business associates of Enron. It deftly compares the ability of Lay and the others to swindle such large amounts of money to Milgram's experiment on the limit of human obedience. The effect all this has is to show the ability of the human mind to find loopholes in the most sophisticated of systems. It also deeply bothers the audience, at least it did me. Any thought a viewer has of the virtues of corporate America will vanish after watching this film. Furthermore, when the film describes Enron's role in the end of Gray Davis' governorship and the Bush family's role in deregulating the business environment, it does so without appearing derogatory. Few documentaries are as adroitly crafted as this one is. Through interviews, TV clips, and narration, Gibney has created an imaginative and compelling documentary. At times I felt as if this film wasn't the documentary it claims to be. It never lets you rest as it gives example after example of the infinity of corruption. Maybe by watching it, you'll be one of the smartest guys in the room. Lay, Skilling, Pei, and Fastow would have no problem acing an ethics course or at least getting a good grade.

Documentary. Prepare to lose all hope that slime balls will grow a set of morals, the oversight committees and businesses are untouchable, the news has anything to do with verifying the truth, the whistle blowers get the attention they deserve or the respect of others, the punishment equals the crime, the poor guy gets his due, the government is effective, the government cannot be bribed, the… because NONE of this will ever happen, and Enron serves as the Icon of Evidence. It is thorough, well-done (a little too witty for its own good), entertaining, and, in the end, depressing as hell. Why? Because YOU KNOW where YOU ARE on the food chain, don't you?

these guys sure were smart. smart about who the real 'mark' was. including enron employees, SEC officials, customers, the entire state of California, and investors who fell for the constant wash of new investment ideas. how do you sell futures in the weather ???? w.c. fields said it best, there's a sucker born every minute. these guys were so smart they outsmarted themselves. they were so ingrained with their greed and evil schemes of fraud and theft, they lost sight of the truth and began believing their own lies, like a true psycho-sociopath. the damage they wrought is incalculable in terms of reputations and lives ruined, retirements shattered and indeed lives lost from the MAN MADE power 'shortages' during fatal heat waves in California. the cold bloodedness of the enron traders making quips about 'aunt Millie' suffering without electricity to run the air conditioner shows the extent some people will go to make money. 'mark' to market. logging profits that haven't happened yet. apparently someone in the SEC didn't read the story about 'dont count your chickens before they hatch'. the ONLY time people, the O-N-L-Y time you MAKE MONEY in the market is when you SELL the instrument and turn it into CASH. anything else is just wishes and dreams and fantasy on paper. numbers on PAPER. the enron gang cleverly worked around that axiom and look at all the people who fell for it and will in another 15 or 20 years when the lesson has been forgotten and the tendency towards greed again kicks in on a nice big scale.

Enron was the US energy company that "Fortune" named as "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years and, at its height, it employed 22,000 people and claimed revenues of around $100 billion. It went bankrupt at the end of 2001 and this documentary was released in 2005, but I did not see it until four years later. By then, we had experienced 'the end of capitalism as we've known it' and the most serious collapse in financial markets since the Wall Street Crash. What Enron and the wider market crash have in common is the murky world of derivatives, an excessive exuberance for risk, and simple avarice and hubris, while the mother and father of both crises are deregulation. Alex Gibney co-wrote, co-produced and directed this work which, though occasionally complex, is compelling viewing and a lesson to us all on corporate greed and regulatory failure. Interviews with key observers and extracts from Congressional hearings are linked by a narration from Peter Coyote. The heroines of the story are Bethany McLean, the financial journalist who first questioned the valuation of Enron, and Sherron Watkins, the senior manager who blew the whistle on the company. The villains are a long list of men headed by Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay and Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling. Maybe there is a gender lesson here as well - as many financial and political ones.

When Enron filed for bankruptcy at the end of 2001, it was a shock to most Americans. But as "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" shows, it shouldn't have been. The documentary, narrated by Peter Coyote, traces the energy giant's origins - including CEO Ken Lay's childhood - to its rise as one of the largest corporations in the United States. What's really interesting is the intricacy of Enron's actions around the world, and how it pulled off all its shenanigans (aided, of course, by Kenny Boy's contributions to George W. Bush's first presidential campaign). Among Enron's more vicious acts was its manipulation of California's electricity in summer, 2001, and how Arnold Schwarzenegger let the company off the hook. Not to mention that Enron's collapse was accompanied by Lay's draining of the employees' retirement. Enron's downfall - followed over the next year by the implosions of Adelphia, WorldCom and Tyco - just goes to show the dangers of letting corporations run rampant. The whole way through, the documentary manages to be funny, just at the sight of what Enron was doing, abetted by Arthur Andersen. All in all, I definitely recommend "E:TSGITR". PS: In "Bowling for Columbine", Michael Moore proposed a TV show called "Corporate Cops" (based on "Cops!"), in which people like Ken Lay would get strip-searched.