This is highly unconventional accounting method by the way, was approved by the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) after being sought by Skilling. For example, the mark to market accounting, the real undoing of Enron, is an inflated accounting technique allowing its user to treat future projected earnings as income today. …show more content… As evidenced by the movie, the more they could get away with the better. One can only imagine why only a handful of people were prosecuted, when there were oh so many more who were equally if not guiltier than they. None of anything they did could have been done without a lot of looking the other way and stamps of approval from both internal guards like the Board of Directors and external ones like Anderson Accounting, the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), and a whole bunch of fat cat politicians, both Republicans and Democrats whose campaigns received hefty and perhaps questionable donations from Lay and Enron. But a more careful consideration of the matter, I had to admit that they really weren’t the problem, even though they were the deed doers. My initial response to the movie, “The Smartest Guys in the Room”, was to discuss Lay and Skilling. That said, the fall of Enron was inevitable from its inception, for whichever way the head goes, the body follows and with Ken Lay as the head, one could expect nothing less. If you like this sort of book, this is a must-read even if you don’t, it’s pretty damn good.Show More There’s no known cure for greed.
There are a few passages that one might argue are too detailed, but for the most part I felt that the detailed explanations were helpful and even if they hadn’t been the book is eminently readable and compelling. The book demonstrates the authors’ intelligence, diligence and writing ability. If this had been fiction, it likely would have been criticized for lacking credibility - how could any company become the “evil empire” that seems to have been Enron? Of course, it’s not fiction, and even if one assumes that the authors may have exaggerated or left out some facts that might have made the villains look less evil, it’s still a “credibly incredible” book. Given the passage of time I can’t say which is better, but this is an amazing book, possibly made even more amazing by the passage of time itself and the fact that I didn’t replace this copy with the 10th anniversary edition. Gibney has just finished producing Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, and directing two new feature documentaries: Gonzo, about Hunter Thompson and Taxi to the. Perhaps it was because I’d read Kurt Eichenwald’s “Conspiracy of Fools” and may have felt that nothing could surpass that. Alex Gibney is the writer, producer, and director of the 2006 Oscar-nominated film, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, which also received the Independent Spirit Award and the WGA Award. I’ve had this book on my shelf for about 10 years, but for some reason I’d never gotten around to reading it. Above all, it’s a fascinating human drama that will prove to be the authoritative account of the Enron scandal. Smartest Guys in the Room is a story of greed, arrogance, and deceit-a microcosm of all that is wrong with American business today. It reveals as never before major characters such as Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow, as well as lesser known players like Cliff Baxter and Rebecca Mark. Drawing on a wide range of unique sources, the book follows Enron’s rise from obscurity to the top of the business world to its disastrous demise. Meticulously researched and character driven, Smartest Guys in the Room takes the reader deep into Enron’s past-and behind the closed doors of private meetings. Now, McLean and Elkind have investigated much deeper, to offer the definitive book about the Enron scandal and the fascinating people behind it. But that was before Fortune published an article by McLean that asked a seemingly innocent question: How exactly does Enron make money? From that point on, Enron’s house of cards began to crumble. Remarkably, it was just two years ago that Enron was thought to epitomize a great New Economy company, with its skyrocketing profits and share price. Today, Enron is the biggest business story of our time, and Fortune senior writers Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind are the new Woodward and Bernstein. And thirty years later, if you’re going to read only one book on Watergate, that’s still the one.
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There were dozens of books about Watergate, but only All the President’s Men gave readers the full story, with all the drama and nuance and exclusive reporting. The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron