Enron Trial
 

Is anyone else following this thing at all? I feel like I am the only one I know that is even somewhat interested. I read the Conspiracy of Fools by Eichenwald about Enron and now I am hooked. GET THIS BOOK for a great read. Its like a Dan Brown book but with real people.

Between Fastow and Skilling, Lay and the BoD I have never heard of such incompetency at this high a level in business. The CFO of the company has a side business with the company where is is the general partner and non-performing assets will be sold to that partnership and everything is backed up by the company stock, so no real risk. Everyone signed off on this too. In B school we were talking about how great their model was... While in fact, there actually wasn't a model. All "earnings" and no cash flow.

Fastow starts his testimony today, this should be interesting.

It is really hard for me to get excited about Enron's dirty dealings when the Federal government does the same and worse routinely. I wouldn't be surprised if they were advised by politicians in the beltway on how to get away with it...Enron is just smoke-screen distraction.

Fastow is gonna torch skilling and lay. defense is gonna say he is testifying to save his ass. probably saved some of his ass but not all. however fastow and his wife were handled very lightly given the amount of money that they stole. thiefs, liars and azzholes. guy on street steals and loaf of bread and recieves harsher treatment than these corp. crooks. there is no justice.

Great testimony yesterday from Fastow. Sure is hitting hard on Skilling. Not much to say about Lay. I am more and more beginning to think that Lay was just plain ignorant of what was really going on in that company or just not smart enough to figure out that he had the fox guarding the hen house.


By the way this is a great place to check out all the testimony going on as blogged by the Houston Chron

http://blogs.chron.com/enrontrialwatch/

There is a movie out on video now "Enron - Smartest Guy In The Room" or something like that. It's a Front Line style explaination/expose' of what they did. Pretty interesting. Enron actually had power plants go off line temporarily in order to boost the energy cost/profits.
Oddly enough I found it in the "Comedy" section where I rent vids (supermarket).
-Chris

"The Smartest Guys in the Room" was a book first - and a good one by two Fortune reporters. My wife enjoyed the movie even though she didn't read the book.