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MOVIE REVIEW
Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room
Directed by: Alex Gibney
Magnolia Films
One of the most fascinating stories of corruption and bankruptcy in corrupt America, Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room is a must rent DVD. A mix of interviews with former employees, media clips, documentary narration/description and clips of Senate hearings shows how greed brought down the seventh largest company in America.
The top execs walked away, almost unscathed, until a few Fortune reporters delved into the dark truth (Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind) with billions of dollars. It is so well done.
When I worked as a researcher in the Development office at Harvard Business School, the file on Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was enormous and I was constantly clipping files on him. He had a huge ego and the most convoluted ideas about how to make money that people seemed to think were fantastic. They followed him like the Pied Piper.
The ideas that this supposedly brilliant man managed to boldly get his intelligent employees to do for him were so far out there, blatantly off-kilter and following poor judgment are scary.
The connection with Enron and George W. Bush is complex and confusing. Enron spins and spins and spins when Fortune begins to analyze its cash flow statements. Fraud through something called "structured finance."
Watching the press coverage and most analysts falling all over Enron as it kills itself through fraud via inventive accounting measures is just sad. The documentary is today's real life Wall Street.
****
By Amy Steele
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