In the documentary "The Smartest Guys in the Room", we watched several shady aspects of the corporation that was Enron.
From the blackouts they were directly responsible for
to the millions of dollars they stole, to the thousands of employees
who lost their pensions, this Houston corporation managed to ruin the
lives of so many, all in the name of greed.
In the clips from the hearings,Skilling seemed like he was completely unaware, but his
response to a Harvard admissions professor in his youth, "I'm FUCKING
smart", definitely shows an arrogant bravado, the same kind that would
be a necessity in a scam of this magnitude.
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Fastow, another sleezeball, was trying to get banks and investors to fork out dough for his shell
corporation, all of which was going directly to him. The ethical issues
with this company are multitudinous, but greed is pretty universal in
big business it seems. What was so flamboyantly abhorrent was that they
didn't care that they were causing people to be without power, that
people were being harmed by fires, etc. As the movie says, the Enron
traders were saying "burn baby, burn! More money for us."
This rogue business actually adopted a company-wide policy of greedy
self-perpetuation: dog eat dog, every man for himself.
Even the public relations guy was slimy, almost as if they were bragging about what they got away with for so long. Pretty unsettling.
You would like to think that this sort of business model wouldn't succeed, but
they were the eighth largest company in the world for a while....
However, karma did eventually catch up to them, even if their consciences didn't.
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