When future Enron President and CEO Jeff Skilling was at Harvard, he was asked by a professor: “Are you smart?” He replied, “I’m effing smart.”
Even if you are not familiar with the intricacies of the Enron scandal or are quickly bored by tales of white-collar criminals cooking the books, you should still see this stylish documentary to reflect upon the weaknesses of this system called capitalism under which we all labor. Yes, capitalism is great when it works, but only if everyone plays by the rules. As the movie is quick to point out, Enron is not a tale about creative accounting. It’s about the people, and these people are some of the most evil and greedy people to ever be in charge of a publicly-traded Fortune 500 company. (That’s pretty evil and greedy).
Let the California energy crisis be a lesson to all of us: The power industry should not be deregulated. There was enough power in the grid to prevent any of the blackouts that occurred in California, but Enron’s traders took advantage of the free market by ordering blackouts at whim, just to line Enron’s coffers with more sorely-needed cash. It was perhaps one of the most vile, reckless moments in 20th century business. (The movie also seems to connect Enron with Arnold Schwarzeneggar, but this is hazy at best).
The movie attempts to explain the behavior of Enron’s traders, who we hear joking and laughing about the blackouts in phone conversations. It showed footage from the famous experiment in the 1950s in which half of the study’s participants administered what they believed to be a lethal electrical shock to another “participant” because the scientist in charge told them to do it and took all responsibility. In other words, the traders and other criminals at Enron did what they knew to be unethical and illegal because their macho, Darwinist corporate environment permitted it. Hell, with everyone at the company focused on nothing but the stock price, and with Enron’s practice of regularly firing 10% of the lowest-performing employees, unethical behavior required.
If you do know a little about Enron, this movie will rehash what you know. I had read Pipe Dreams a few years ago, so I already knew about most of the story, but really dug the footage and the way the movie was edited. This wasn’t a Michael Moore-style skewing of the facts. The history of Enron and its bankruptcy is presented as it happens. There’s plenty of footage from company meetings (during which employees are urged to buy more stock by the very same top executives who are dumping theirs), taped interviews and news conferences full of boldfaced lies, creepy pans of the empty Enron buildings, the Senate hearings, and even taped message of thanks from Bush Sr. and Jr. to Ken Lay for helping with their campaigns. Things that make you go hmmm.
One thing that this movie made clear to me: The Internet Stock Bubble was not only fueled by the greed of some, but a basic ignorance about technology. All Jeff Skilling had to do was throw around talk about trading broadband and swear they had working technology, and the stock price quadrupled. I assume most serious investors understand the fundamentals of trading traditional commodities like pork bellies, but how many people really grasped what Enron was proposing to do? I found this interesting, having been on technology projects that have basically been proposed and specified by the good old boys in Sales and Marketing who like to sell what looks good on paper.
On the way home from the movies, my iPod shuffle once again showed its uncanny ability to be the soundtrack of my life: “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones came on. Very fitting, because Enron had nothing but red balance sheets and they painted them black. I listened to the song twice just to relish in its appropriateness, and dreamed of the day that Skilling and Lay have to face the facts and account for their white collar atrocities.
Is this movie good? It’s effing good.
