Enron flick sickening
TS loves going to the movies, the 15-year old hotdog made of approx 3.3% sausage meat, the salted popcorn that has the consistency of cardboard and the lovey-dovey teenagers in the back row who, when bored of kissing, enjoy throwing rock hard sherbet lemons at TS’s head.
But TS was left with a queasy feeling in the pit of its stomach after coming out of an advanced screening of the new rise and fall of Enron documentary, entitled ‘The smartest guys in the room’.
The comprehensive and shocking 110-minute film takes the viewer from the early visions of energy de-regulation champion, George Bush ‘friendly’ Enron CEO Kenneth Lay and his partner in ‘crime’ COO Jeff Skilling as well as the rise and rise of the former corporate giants’ inflated stock price and flawed mark to market accounting system to its final colossal fall from grace when it filed for bankruptcy in December 2001. Just over one month after that one of its top executives, Cliff Barker, tragically committed suicide.
TS was amazed and saddened at how all the lies, greed, corruption and massive flaws in corporate America brought a company and thousands of employees and pension holders to its knees.
You get the feeling that a little more than a blueberry tofu cream pie should have been thrown at Skilling by an investor during an Enron meeting in June 2001.
Lay and Skilling are currently await trial, set for January 2006.