And there was plenty of blame to go around. The story was over, but its telling had only begun. On December 2, 2001, Enron declared bankruptcy. While Lay, Skilling, Andy Fastow, and others pocketed millions after dumping their stocks before they became worthless, 20,000 average workers were left without jobs, nest eggs, and pensions. It all came tumbling down in 2001 - not as suddenly and violently as the World Trade Center, but with plenty of social devastation. And the rolling blackouts in California, which were caused in part by Enron's rapacious methods of buying and selling energy, enriched the company's coffers enough to keep things afloat for a few more months. As the result of cooked books, stock prices soared, even though there were no real profits to justify Wall Street's optimism (the accountants were recording expected profits rather than actual profits). Lay and Jeff Skilling, the two men at the top of Enron's pyramid (which we eventually learned was "a house of cards…built over a pool of gasoline"), were media darlings, credited with creating a new business model. In the midst of the late-1990s stock boom, money magazines couldn't write complementary stories fast enough. Just because director Alex Gibney doesn't venture deeply into areas where there aren't facts to support his claims, that doesn't mean we aren't able to draw conclusions about things like payoffs, bribes, and the possible benefits accorded to Enron by the close relationship between Ken Lay and the Bush family.Įnron: The Smartest Guys in the Room chronicles how the Texas-based company grew from Ken Lay's gamble on energy deregulation in 1985 to the 7th largest corporation in 2000.
The film also offers insight into some of the unsubstantiated rumors that have been whispered since the energy giant's collapse. Those who think this couldn't happen again are naïve. It provides a detailed autopsy of what happened (without becoming so technical that everyone except the lawyers and accountants in the audience become lost) and it warns against the culture of "synergistic corruption" that has infiltrated all of corporate America. And it's not fiction.Įnron: The Smartest Guys in the Room does two things exceptionally well. This is Glengarry Glen Ross on a larger scale. From the boardrooms to the stockrooms, survival of the fittest means only those who raise the EBIT keep their jobs and get their bonuses. There's only one word that means anything to the CEOs, COOs, and CFOs of major companies, and it's not "ethics." Instead, "greed" is the mantra by which they live and work - get rich quick and damn the consequences (and the people crushed underfoot during the stampede to grab the money). Today, Corporate America may pay lip-service to the term "ethics," but the men and women at the top don't understand or care about the definition. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is truly a tale for our time.
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