The Smartest Guys in the Room (Enron)
 

Anyone seen it? Unbelievable what these guys got away with. I'm stunned.

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Saw it back in college in one of my business classes. GREAT film and worth the time it took to watch it. Booking the future earnings of an asset? What the eff was the SEC thinking letting them account this way?

I watched half. Gonna watch the rest later. What they got away with. 10B to almost 70B in 15 years and then collapsed completely and totally in 24 days. Every time one scheme collapsed they started another one with new projected earnings.The one guy got out early and bought up half of Colorado.

I'm probably going to earn anout a mil this year. However I have nothing whatsoever to back that projection up.But my word is good. So, what size mortgage can I get?
Dumb, dumb,dumb. What do the SEC do anyway? They were tipped off on about 5 different occasions about Bernie Madoff yet.....................

I love the part where Ken Lay sends his buddy Bush a list of recommendations for the post that is supposed to be regulating these guys. Hmm, wonder who he was watching out for the whole time?

Great Documentary!

Anywhere on the net to watch it?

If you have a Netflix account, you can watch it online there.

Probably the best documentary I've ever seen. It's crazy that all of that was allowed to happen. I thought all of the recorded phone conversations were unbelievable, when they were saying things like "Take all of Grandma's money, Who cares!" stuff like that (i dont remember exactly what was said). Definitely somethin to watch if you have Netflix. "The Union" is another good doc, on the marijuana grow operations in British Columbia. pretty interesting stuff

My Dad was an HR manager for Enron and lost pretty much all of his retirement savings as a result of their collapse. Employees were encouraged to put all of their stock in Enron and as a manager my Dad was strongly encouraged to set the example in doing so. He was on the verge of retiring right before their debacle, but then was forced to start over after losing everything. He finally retired 2 weeks ago with about a 1/4 of what he would have had with Enron.

I've downloaded it but haven't watch it yet

this has been playing on CNBC lately - check there. I watched the Enron documentary yesterday and then watched Wall Street on Fox Movie Channel last night - talk about a one two punch. By the way the new Wall Street movie looks like it could be good to. Too bad they couldn't get Charlie Sheen for at least a cameo.

If you download this:
http://www.utorrent.com/ -- its tiny and a legit program, don't worry.... once installed click here:
http://isohunt.com/download/11578594...e+room.torrent --- click "Download .torrent" and it will prompt to open the torrent with the player.... don't save it, just run it.

It'll open in the utorrent downloader.... download and if you right click on it in the player and click "open containing folder".... then just watch it

IMO the power/gas markets still have to few players in them. It would still be fairly easy for marketers/traders to maniupulate markets. Obviously the FERC attempts to regulate the market, but it's ultimately up to the people who make the market to regulate themselves.

The special about this was on MSNBC the other night on American Greed or something like that. It was amazing and it is amazing that more folks did not go to jail. The big banks were full in on this scam too. They had recordings of the energy traders making jokes (like Ben said) about cleaning out grandma and how much money they were making and planning to retire by 30. When the forest fires derated a transmission line due to the heat of the fire, they (the guys on tape) were laughing and cheering for more fire, thus driving up the value of the line and making their high priced generation more palatable. The traders were making so much money it was hard for them to go home because they knew they were "losing" money for every deal they didn't do. Being in the public power industry it saddens me to hear people talk like that and shut off equipment just to inflate the price, basically holding power for ransom. In my opinion, the power industry ran pretty well up to this point and there was no need for deregulation. I would like to see how the few politicians, who ramrodded this, profitted from deregulation. With the money Enron was "making" I know they slid some up towards DC.

Sorry to hear about your father Richard. It is sad that there are scum out there, who are really nothing more that real life Gordon Geckos, that care nothing about the working individuals.