Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room: Directed by Alex Gibney. With John Beard, Tim Belden, Barbara Boxer, George W. Bush. A documentary about the Enron corporation, its faulty and corrupt business practices, and how they led to its fall.

“Enron was the US energy company that u0026quot;Fortuneu0026quot; named as u0026quot;Americau0026#39;s Most Innovative Companyu0026quot; for six consecutive years and, at its height, it employed 22,000 people and claimed revenues of around $100 billion. It went bankrupt at the end of 2001 and this documentary was released in 2005, but I did not see it until four years later. By then, we had experienced u0026#39;the end of capitalism as weu0026#39;ve known itu0026#39; and the most serious collapse in financial markets since the Wall Street Crash. What Enron and the wider market crash have in common is the murky world of derivatives, an excessive exuberance for risk, and simple avarice and hubris, while the mother and father of both crises are deregulation.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAlex Gibney co-wrote, co-produced and directed this work which, though occasionally complex, is compelling viewing and a lesson to us all on corporate greed and regulatory failure. Interviews with key observers and extracts from Congressional hearings are linked by a narration from Peter Coyote. The heroines of the story are Bethany McLean, the financial journalist who first questioned the valuation of Enron, and Sherron Watkins, the senior manager who blew the whistle on the company. The villains are a long list of men headed by Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay and Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling. Maybe there is a gender lesson here as well – as many financial and political ones.”