Review: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

"Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" is a really fascinating documentary about the rise and fall of Enron. It’s quite fascinating to watch actual video of optimistic and upbeat speeches made by both Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling to employees and investors while simultaneously seeing an overlay of the financial state of the company at the moment the speech was made. If they hadn’t been busy selling stock while the company was tanking I would say that these guys have to be the most optimistic folks I've ever seen. Totally blinded to the reality of their company and unaware that the hole they were digging was getting so deep that there was NEVER going to be a way to turn it around. But, that isn't what they were doing. They were busy selling stock while the ship was sinking. This video presents a fascinating look at these men lying publicly, convincingly, and enthusiastically to anyone who would listen. And it's all on public record. I'm left wondering...how did they do it? How could they have convinced a lot of very smart people that the company was doing great? How is it that the financial report could have been presented so that no one outside the top tier of Enron knew the company was in serious trouble? How is it that the board of directors didn’t suspect something? The financial information is supposed to be public record and the speech videos are public record. Arthur Anderson signed off on the financial statements so investors trusted that the information was accurate and that the company was honestly presenting its true condition. It's just crazy to me that people from several companies: Enron, Arthur Anderson, investment banks, lawyers could all be so greedy and irresponsible to allow Enron become such a problem If everyone involved had been honest about the true state of the company and had honestly, ethically, and legally tried to fix the company where would it be today? I doubt, in the short-term, it would have risen as high as it did due to the illegal activities, but in the long run it very well could have been a star.