Enron, the movie

[question everything]

Saw a preview of the movie and was really really mad at them. What arrogants! I lived in California in the summer of 2000 and remember the rolling blackout... only to learn that the bastards would cut the supply, would shut down a refinery to create an artificial shortage, to raise the prices and then "sell it back" to California. And Bush, of course, refused to intervene, still would stick it to California.

And... at the end, as we were walking out, all of us agreed that most of the former employees of Enron, that lost their jobs and their life savings, did vote for Bush six months ago.

[CountAllVotes]

1. I want to see that!

I hope it will be on DVD soon!

:kick:

[EVDebs]

2. Let's hope they mention the two dozen CIA employed by Enron

and how that plays into the story. If not, well, they missed a golden opportunity to expose this quasi-proprietary company.

[stillcool]

3. and the deal that fell through with the pipeline..............n/t

[question everything]

4. 'Enron' smartly documents the high-flying firm's fall

chicagotribune.com

'Enron' smartly documents the high-flying firm's fall

Michael Wilmington, Tribune movie critic

April 29, 2005

(snip)

At its best, it's a thriller that makes John Grisham's paranoiac concoctions seem almost tame. Based on the book of the same name by Fortune magazine reporters Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean, with both journalists as frequent on-camera interviewees, it's an exhaustive but engrossing account of the incredible rise and fall of Enron--andof top bosses Ken Lay, Jeff Skillingand their double-dealing executives, duplicitous accountants, rapacious traders and hapless employees, all of whom became enmeshed in what now looks like the biggest corporate crime in American history.

(snip)

As if all that weren't enough, Enron had super-clout as well: intimate ties with the Bush administration (to which it contributed Secretary of the Navy Tom White), plus enough power to bring California to its knees and bleed it white during the 2000-2001 energy crisis--before Enron itself collapsed in a chaos of frantic executive stock selloffs, resignations, suicide, prosecutions, mass layoffs, plummeting stock prices, a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, disgrace and high-profile criminal indictments.

At the center of this storm are two amazing characters: one-time Enron president and chief operating officer Jeff Skilling (brother of Tribune Co.'s renowned WGN-Ch. 9 meteorologist Tom Skilling) and chairman and chief executive officer Ken Lay, the man called "Kenny Boy" by his longtime pal and political beneficiary, President George W. Bush.

(snip)

On the evidence here, the whole company seems to have been a big show: a vast chimera, built by the end on dubious laws and outright fraud and deception. If "Ask Why" was the company's official motto, "Money Talks" and "The Hell with Ethics" seems to be the secret ones. The movie proffers two key factors in the company's demise: first, the adoption of "mark-to-market" accounting, a policy used by Enron's executives and accountants (the since-collapsed Chicago-based Arthur Andersen firm) to claim profits that never existed on the basis of the deals that were supposed to eventually produce them. The second was the creation by Enron chief financial officer Andrew Fastow of innumerable mythical companies to hide all their actual losses from investor scrutiny.

But there's lots more, climaxed by the fleecing of Enron's own employees, who were encouraged to keep their eventually worthless stock while top dogs like Skilling and Lay sold theirs for millions. Most infuriating of all, and most illustrative of the culture of greed that consumed Enron's elite, are the phone tapes we hear of juvenile-sounding Enron traders making coarse, stupid jokes about the mess they've made of California's power supply and the fortune they're reaping from it. "Burn, baby, burn!" one giggles as forest fires threaten the state's power plants.

(snip)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/custom/friday/chi-0504290237apr29,1,1271667.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

[FreedomAngel82]

5. It looks really good

I saw a preview of it on bushflash.com Arrogant pricks. I wish they could pay for what they did.