The film, based on the book with the same name, travels back in time, describing Enron chairman Kenneth Lay's humble beginnings as the son of a preacher, his ascent in the corporate world as an "apostle of deregulation," his fortuitous friendship with the Bush family, and the development of his business strategies in natural gas futures. The film points out that the culture of financial crookedness at Enron was evident as far back as 1987, when Lay apparently encouraged the outrageous risk taking and profit skimming of two oil traders in Enron's Valhalla office because they were bringing a lot of money into the company. But it wasn't until eventual CEO Jeff Skilling arrived at Enron that the company's "aggressive accounting" philosophy truly took hold. The film explores the lengths to which the company went in order to appear incredibly profitable. Their win-at-all-costs strategy included swooning financial analysts with huge contracts for their firms, hiding debts by essentially having the company loan money to itself, and using California's deregulation of the electricity market to manipulate the state's energy supply. The film reveals how Lay, Skilling, and other execs managed to keep their riches, while thousands of lower-level employees saw their loyalty repaid with the loss of their jobs and their retirement funds.
This was a very interesting documentary and I learned a lot by watching it. A couple of years ago, when Enron was in the news every day, I didn't pay very close attention because I felt bombarded since it was everywhere. This documentary did a great job of summarizing how Enron went from a hugely successful company to the biggest collapse in corporate history to that point. I didn't realize how far the collapse of Enron reached to negatively effect so many things - the rolling blackouts in California, the recall of Gray Davis, the creation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and most tragic, the complete loss of retirement and pension funds for thousands of innocent Enron employees. A lot of work was done to pull together film footage and audio tapes that tell the story using the words of the actual players in this complex scheme. A great cautionary tale...
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Would I watch it again: Yes
Starring: The real Enron Execs: Kenneth Lay, Jeff Skilling, Andrew Fastow
I typically watch movies on Monday, Wednesday and Friday while riding the ACE Train from Tracy to Santa Clara. The opinions expressed are those of me, myself and I.
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