Toggle Menu

A Corporate Horror Story

While everyone I know waits for Patrick Fitzgerald's next move--will he or won't he indict Karl Rove?-- I eagerly await the verdict in the Enron trial.

Remember that giant corporate house of cards that camecrashing down on the heads of all the little people while the big guys like former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling and Chairman Ken Lay cashed out for mega-millions, smirking all the way? Remember theugliest financial scandal in an era of some pretty nasty corporate scandals? After presenting nearly three dozen witnesses and hundreds of documents, lawyers for Skilling and Lay rested their defenseagainst fraud charges earlier this week. Some analysts say that "gut feelings the jurors developed about Skilling and Lay over 14 days of testimony could prove to be the key..."

Gut feelings? If you want to turbo-charge your gut feelings about these corporate gladiators who ravaged 1000s of pensions, check out the documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

The Nation

May 11, 2006

While everyone I know waits for Patrick Fitzgerald’s next move–will he or won’t he indict Karl Rove?– I eagerly await the verdict in the Enron trial.

Remember that giant corporate house of cards that camecrashing down on the heads of all the little people while the big guys like former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling and Chairman Ken Lay cashed out for mega-millions, smirking all the way? Remember theugliest financial scandal in an era of some pretty nasty corporate scandals? After presenting nearly three dozen witnesses and hundreds of documents, lawyers for Skilling and Lay rested their defenseagainst fraud charges earlier this week. Some analysts say that “gut feelings the jurors developed about Skilling and Lay over 14 days of testimony could prove to be the key…”

Gut feelings? If you want to turbo-charge your gut feelings about these corporate gladiators who ravaged 1000s of pensions, check out the documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

I finally watched it last weekend. It’s like a corporate horror story. It’s also, as one film reviewer described it,”a primer on corporate malfeasance for dummies.”

No matter what your politics, this well told tale about greed, arrogance, ethical malfeasance on an epic scale is bound to make you mad as hell. Watch it now. And be worried, very worried, and angry, very angry if these Enron hucksters get off.

The NationTwitterFounded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has chronicled the breadth and depth of political and cultural life, from the debut of the telegraph to the rise of Twitter, serving as a critical, independent, and progressive voice in American journalism.


Latest from the nation