ONE TENTACLE OF THE OCTODRAGON DIES - ANOTHER IS BORN
Alex S. Gabor
October 23, 2006
I just finished watching ENRON: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Last week I saw a special screening of Iraq For Sale.
Today Former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling arrived at the federal courthouse in Houston to hear whether he would have to spend more than 20 years behind bars for helping to orchestrate one of the nation's biggest financial scandals that has been revealed to date. There are many more ongoing financial scandals which the markets have yet to discover and reveal even to itself.
The documentary about Enron is the yet to be finished fully disclosed partial inside story of one of history's greatest business scandals, in which top executives of America's 7th largest company walked away with over one billion dollars while investors and employees lost everything. The docudrama didn't dig deep enough. It fell very short of revealing ties between Enron, the Bush and Bin Laden familes and the Carlyle Group.
Based on the best-selling book "The Smartest Guys in the Room" by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean, the first person to ever ask "where is Enron getting its' money from?", and Peter Elkind features some insider accounts and incendiary corporate audio and videotapes, Writer and Director Alex Gibney reveals the almost unimaginable personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy and the utter moral vacuum that posed as corporate philosophy. The film is about people not numbers and illustrates the symptoms of a disease that permeates global finance.
Perhaps McLean and Elkind will now dig even deeper and uncover the post mortem diagnosis of the world ailing financial system, wherein Enron was merely a tiny expendable tentacle of a much larger Octodragon.
The film comes to a harrowing denouement as we hear Enron traders' own voices as they cause the theft of $30 billion in cash flow from the debacle they created out of the California energy crisis.
Back in Houston today, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake is allowing victims to speak at the hearing about how the company's implosion affected their lives. The collapse wiped out thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in market value and more than $2 billion in pension plans.
We can barely come to understand the corporate capacity for depravity and the sheer magnitude of how the avarice of Enron's traders and their bosses had a shocking and profound domino effect that still has not woken big business up to the reality that nothing plus nothing leaves nothing.
Ken Lay, Enron's founder who was convicted but never sentenced to life in prison for his crimes, died July 5th, 2006 of a heart attack in Colorado. To his dying day he insisted he was innocent.
Wendy Vaughan, one of the jurors at the trial of Lay and his co-defendant Skilling, said that she wanted to believe what they were saying but "there were places in the testimony I felt their character was questionable". Lay had intended to appeal against his conviction which under US laws is automatically revoked if a man dies before sentencing.
But with his death, Ms Vaughan's assessment of him - and many which are less charitable - will stand unchallenged.
Unfortunately, despite Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing, Healthsouth, Haliburton, (watch Iraq For Sale) and the thousands of other corrupt corporate practices ongoing in America, a la backdating stock options, the real bamboozles between the ponzie schemes of bankers, lawyers, accountants, corporate America and the United States Government, the amount of truth on the subject which has reached the public consciousness is merely the tip of the iceberg.
Prosecutors have asked that Skilling turn over nearly $183 million, which they claim he pocketed while at Enron. The U.S. government had divided that amount between Skilling and Lay. But Lay's death has left that amount solely on Skilling.
The film about Enron is merely a microscopic look at the larger ills facing our planet today. There should be a sequel and more film makers should start making films like these to enlighten the rest of us on how deep the roots of corruption really have grown.
The only things that will uproot the Octodragon and its global tentacles are more of the same. Killing off Skilling and Lay is just another cell of a tentacle that won't change how America or the world does business.
While the story of Enron finally comes to a close in the public mind, another tentacle of the Octodragon that has reached into the homes of over a billion internet users - Google - has been born. It is only 18 months old and still growing like the Borg.
Today Former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling arrived at the federal courthouse in Houston to hear whether he would have to spend more than 20 years behind bars for helping to orchestrate one of the nation's biggest financial scandals that has been revealed to date. There are many more ongoing financial scandals which the markets have yet to discover and reveal even to itself.
The documentary about Enron is the yet to be finished fully disclosed partial inside story of one of history's greatest business scandals, in which top executives of America's 7th largest company walked away with over one billion dollars while investors and employees lost everything. The docudrama didn't dig deep enough. It fell very short of revealing ties between Enron, the Bush and Bin Laden familes and the Carlyle Group.
Based on the best-selling book "The Smartest Guys in the Room" by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean, the first person to ever ask "where is Enron getting its' money from?", and Peter Elkind features some insider accounts and incendiary corporate audio and videotapes, Writer and Director Alex Gibney reveals the almost unimaginable personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy and the utter moral vacuum that posed as corporate philosophy. The film is about people not numbers and illustrates the symptoms of a disease that permeates global finance.
Perhaps McLean and Elkind will now dig even deeper and uncover the post mortem diagnosis of the world ailing financial system, wherein Enron was merely a tiny expendable tentacle of a much larger Octodragon.
The film comes to a harrowing denouement as we hear Enron traders' own voices as they cause the theft of $30 billion in cash flow from the debacle they created out of the California energy crisis.
Back in Houston today, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake is allowing victims to speak at the hearing about how the company's implosion affected their lives. The collapse wiped out thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in market value and more than $2 billion in pension plans.
We can barely come to understand the corporate capacity for depravity and the sheer magnitude of how the avarice of Enron's traders and their bosses had a shocking and profound domino effect that still has not woken big business up to the reality that nothing plus nothing leaves nothing.
Ken Lay, Enron's founder who was convicted but never sentenced to life in prison for his crimes, died July 5th, 2006 of a heart attack in Colorado. To his dying day he insisted he was innocent.
Wendy Vaughan, one of the jurors at the trial of Lay and his co-defendant Skilling, said that she wanted to believe what they were saying but "there were places in the testimony I felt their character was questionable". Lay had intended to appeal against his conviction which under US laws is automatically revoked if a man dies before sentencing.
But with his death, Ms Vaughan's assessment of him - and many which are less charitable - will stand unchallenged.
Unfortunately, despite Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing, Healthsouth, Haliburton, (watch Iraq For Sale) and the thousands of other corrupt corporate practices ongoing in America, a la backdating stock options, the real bamboozles between the ponzie schemes of bankers, lawyers, accountants, corporate America and the United States Government, the amount of truth on the subject which has reached the public consciousness is merely the tip of the iceberg.
Prosecutors have asked that Skilling turn over nearly $183 million, which they claim he pocketed while at Enron. The U.S. government had divided that amount between Skilling and Lay. But Lay's death has left that amount solely on Skilling.
The film about Enron is merely a microscopic look at the larger ills facing our planet today. There should be a sequel and more film makers should start making films like these to enlighten the rest of us on how deep the roots of corruption really have grown.
The only things that will uproot the Octodragon and its global tentacles are more of the same. Killing off Skilling and Lay is just another cell of a tentacle that won't change how America or the world does business.
While the story of Enron finally comes to a close in the public mind, another tentacle of the Octodragon that has reached into the homes of over a billion internet users - Google - has been born. It is only 18 months old and still growing like the Borg.