Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

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.

Based on and named after the bestseller book Smartest Guys in the Room, this documentary provides an insightful look into the scandalous fall of Enron Corp. There are no actors in this documentary and yet it is dramatic. Such were the factors leading to the 'amazing rise and scandalous fall' of Enron that even a documentary featuring events preceding that historic day in December 2001, when Enron filed for the largest bankruptcy in the corporate US history, seems like a tale of epic imagination.

This documentary is neither as detailed nor as insightful as the book, but it does a great job of providing an insightful and reasonably detailed account of the Enron saga. Overall, it is not of any incremental value for the people who have read the book. However, if you can't go through 464 pages, this does a great job of enlightening you on the drama that Enron was.

A very interesting expose on the greed, hubris, lies, etc. that brought Enron down. This film is well-done and digs up a lot of dirt. The PBS viewing showed a little clip after the film which discussed the strange trial results, which was probably the biggest problem with the film - it pretty much ends with the bankruptcy of enron and doesn't show much about the trials, since they took place later, although they would make for a great inclusion. To me, the most incredible part of the film is that fact that these guys would stand up every day and tell bold-faced lies to the employees, the government, the investors, and make it all sound good. They had to be thinking in the back of their head "it's all going to come crashing down someday"...

...because I can't see what's different from what happened here and what the banks did that caused the global collapse of 2008. Turning hard assets into derivatives and selling them on the market? Knowing that a product is worthless and encouraging its trade anyways? This sounds familiar, it's just Enron traded derivatives on fuels and the banks did it on real estate. Thus I guess there is nothing different here other than the banks committed crimes on such a large scale that all of the criminals wouldn't fit into prisons without us building more, plus all of those campaign contributions! Congress couldn't let THAT dry up! So here we sit with 0% interest rates on our savings until the banks recoup every cent that they lost, so I don't see how this is different from what was threatened in Crete - confiscation of a portion of all depositors' funds to make the banks there whole, except here in the U.S. it is happening slooooowly, so nobody complains of outright theft. But I digress.

Now to the film itself. It takes almost two hours to chart the history of Enron, from the beginning in the mid 80's to its sudden collapse in 2001. There are interviews with everyone involved with the company from accountants to regular employees, and like all Ponzi schemes, people might have had their doubts and suspicions, but nobody wanted to upset the money train especially if they are on that train. And like all Ponzi schemes Enron came to a sudden abrupt end when there was no way to hide the fact that all of the money and the profits were not real.

Also very interesting is the gladiator/macho corporate culture described, largely caused by COO Jeff Skilling waking up one day, realizing he was a nerd, and wanting to throw off that nerd persona. He lost weight, worked out, got Lasik done on his eyes, and began to organize adventure trips for himself and an inner circle of Enron executives, some of which involved actual bodily danger. He instituted an Enron employee ranking system in which employees were ranked from 1-5 and those in the lowest ranks were automatically terminated. It was the Billionaire Boys Club minus the murder and involving a much bigger club.

Of course, now the scandal looks almost quaint compared to what we've been living with since 2008.In 2005, when this film was made, such an implosion by a company that had been named "most innovative company" for six consecutive years by CEOs, 1996-2001, the last year being the year of Enron's collapse, was still quite the spectacle. The irony is that if Enron had collapsed in 2011 instead of 2001, I doubt anybody would have gone to jail. Heck, it might not have even been newsworthy except in Texas! Also, the company might have even received a federal bailout.

The highlight of the film for me - a video "Christmas card" to Ken Lay made by Enron execs in which they do a comedy sketch about "creative accounting" which turns out to be EXACTLY what the company was doing that hid their problems.

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.