The Laird Recommends: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
M. and I went to see Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room in a theater on Saturday. Very good, very interesting, and very thought provoking. Thoughts like, "Who committed the biggest crime?" And, "Was this inevitable?" Also, "How can I get my hands around the necks of the California electricty traders?
posted by VMM at 9:19 PM
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And Ken Lay still walks free, and Arthur Andersen gets off, and might I suggest that this is exhibit A in the benefits of responsible government regulation or cooperative ownership of utilities.
The Enron story suggests that what I like to call the Cult of Profit is a cultural phenomenon as much as an economic one.
I learned from the movie that Enron ran commercials with the catch phrase "ask why." One scene in the movie that impressed me was where a low-level Enron employee, musing on what went wrong, said something like "Enron was always telling us to 'ask why' and I didn't do that enough. I should have asked 'why' to my manager, my co-workers, the executives. I didn't ask 'why' enough."
It was sad to see that an employee in a minor position took more personal responsibility for the crimes than the all of the big-shots combined.
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