And one of the disgraced Enron executives had a kid….who was Elizabeth Holmes, and was CEO of the Theranos fraud company, and currently sitting in prison.
What's always fascinated me about Enron was it seems they spent more resources, time, and energy in the fascade than it would have taken just to run a normal company.
What bothers me about all of these scandals is that the agencies that are supposed to regulate them miss the entire scheme despite being told multiple times. There’s usually one fall guy and people forget.
Not like the public is helpful with that, really. People just want someone they can throw tomatoes at in the town stockade for a few days and quickly lose interest afterwards
I’ve a major in corporate finance and a trading experience of more than a decade. There are dozens of enrons even today in the market. Once shit hits the fan, u will know some of them.
"Enron, the Smartest Guys in the Room" was the first movie that made me so angry I actually threw something at the TV. Everyone involved with Enron truly unbelievably all deserve to burn in Hell.
You're letting some of them off easy. 31 year PGE who retired in 1995 two year's before Enron bought his former company, a company that started in 1888, annual retirement amont went from $28,800 to $1,640 after it was found in Enron Bankruptcy that Enron had taken the cash out of the company's fully funded retirement trust accounts they received after merging and replaced it with Enron stock 11 months before bankruptcy. That deserves more than eternal damnation for an even swap.
In that film they interviewed the Utility Worker for Portland Electric. The guy had what about $140K in his 401k Retirement when ENRON bought the company which was turned into Enron stock. Due to the Dark Rules he couldn't sell the stock. By the time it was lifted his 401k Value was $9000. The common people suffered too....
AAC/ABC had a reputation of generating a lot of reports and zero results. Their job was not to ACCOMPLISH anything. It was to APPEAR to accomplish something.
I used to pass their building on 1600 Smith St everyday... now Chevron occupies their buildings... those will always be the enron towers in my Houstonian eyes
@@thekingofkingsrp mannnnn... I'm so sick of folks hating on my astros!!! Every team in the MLB cheats!!! Baseball is full of cheaters especially the pitchers!!! They managed to hit the world series damn near every year and we took it back!!!!
I started off with an interest in theranos (i work for a science company and could see how arrogance, a shitty concept and failing testing could create a slippery slope!) And that drew me to the Enron story. What blew my mind about Enron was that period when they became involved in supplying maintenance services...it reminded me so much of the company i work for now- "well, we're REALLY shit at it, and we are really unreliable, and we arent interested in it, and theres no margin...BUT IF WE DO IT IT WILL BE AN AUTOMATIC SUCCESS BECAUSE WE ARE SO SMART" with absolutely no eye on delivery. Just announcements. Anyway, that got me into the story of Deutsch bank, the 2008 collapse, Wirecard, the big short, the RJR Norbisco LBO....etc etc All my reading now is corporate fraud and investment banking 😂
I was in Federal Prison with Fastow in Florence, Colorado and even though it was a "camp", with absolutely no stress between inmates, Andy was very skittish and kept very much too himself. He had 10 years to do and never knew if an inmate or worse a corrections officer would be coming along that personally, or had realatives, that lost money in the whole scandal. I was released soon after he got there so I don't know if he ever got too comfortable there, probably over time.
12:44 A better example might be buying a brand-new car. You likely won't immediately take ownership of the car, especially if you have selected some optional extras. But you know you will be receiving the car at a later date. The car is thus an accrued asset.
Carrying the analogy: You book the $50K car as an asset, now. But you have lease payments and choose to only book the payments when they are physically paid. Boom, you have $50K now, but only $12K cost in 1 year - $38K magically (I know, you have a lease payable but we are using an analogy).
Excellent video! (Long Format works for you!) This is a story I knew of at the time... but being 15 or so had other things to worry about, I never really bothered to take a look back. So now with your help I have, Thanks Darkness, great explanation and video!
Uh, I was supposed to go BACK to MCI from TBS, when TBS got rid of their Mainframe. I was a SAS programmer at the time. MCI used a lot of SAS back then. TBS talked me into staying, to move into the client-server world. 6 months later Enron (who bought MCI) collapsed... Probably the best career move I didn't make!
At 2:35, the reason that they decided against using the name “Enteron” was because enteron is the name of the digestive tract. Not exactly the sexy, powerful-sounding name that they were looking for. (Think waste products)
One of my stupid buys. I bought 1000 shares at $2.10 thinking surely they owned infrastructure or rights someone would buy that would keep them out if Bankruptcy. Plus I also thought employees could borrow the money to stave off Bankruptcy to save their retirement accounts. But boy was I wrong, the company had already looted the company paid pension plan including the fully-funded retirement company paid trust accounts they got from PGE when they bought them in 1997. Although not black&white ledger provable they basically repaid 40% of acquisition costs with the retirement funds of the future retirees they inherited. 11 months before the collapse they issued Enron stock to replace the actual cash that was in those trust accounts. So, PGE employees already retired got zeroed out along with all the current vested employees. That was BRUTAL. Those ENRON crooks were some dirty dirty ba$turds.
Part of Enron did actually continue on by getting spun off in bankruptcy and is still operating today (their actual oil and gas production arm), which is now EOG resources. EOG of course stands for Enron Oil and Gas, however, unsurprisingly, for legal and image reasons, EOG doesnt actually stand for anything as an abbreviation. Currently valued at north of 70 billion, one of the largest shale drillers in NA.
Nothing was spun off from ENRON after they filed Bankruptcy only assets liquidated by the Court. ENRON shareholders never got a penny from stock ownership but owners of record did receive 2 seperate payments totaling 0.0635 per share from the 7.2 Billion dollars in class action fraud settlements.
In Italy in management courses is often paired as a case study with dairy giant Parmalat, which fun enough went bust in more or less the same years (early 2000s)
So, it's a smaller collapse, and it's in the UK.... But it's a doozy, and an excellent example of when your boss is dodgy, you're screwed. To be totally fair, by the end of it, you might even feel a little sorry for said boss, but only a little sorry. I give you the insurance company "Fire Auto and Marine" and the slow madness of Emil Savundra.
i work for a billionaire who owns a steel company that sells himself steel to build apartments, but the amount of shell companies in him n his wifes name is insane..."allegedly" (not allegedly)
Brilliant video man Also for those who are a little more curious about this a channel called Company Man made a video about this a while which is also very good
I have some interesting insight because I worked there for five years at Enron. Enteron was thrown out as a name because late in the game people figured out. It’s the Greek word for intestine. The original Enron logo had yellow instead of green and in fact, they spent a fortune printing out letterhead and stationary and business cards until the genius is figured out that the yellow did not Xerox, so they had to reprint everything with green instead of yellow.
The thing is they weren’t hiding anything they were doing from any of the lawyers, accountants, banks, Board of Directors or any other entities overseeing them.
The creation of Sarbaines-Oxley (industry acronym: SOX) should have been called the "consultancy multi-trillion dollar full-employment act." Having been part of SOX consultant teams, I can 100% guarantee there it has accomplished ZERO except for keeping KPMG, Deloitte, PWC and a few others rolling in $$$. A child could undercut these so-called "controls." The only thing that keeps another Enron from happening is auditors who know what to look for - NOT the bazillions of reams of paper and Excel Spreadsheets the teams generate. That, combined with the fear of what being part of another Enron/AAC debacle could do to you individually.
these videos just confirm to me that money really isn’t real, what do you mean they can just be a dominant force and have money bc they just make up the amounts
Darkness the curse you should bring back Alfred E Perlman back for shorts # Bring back Alfred E Perlman # Bring Back I Want That Steam Engine # I Want That Steam Engine
People should not be surprised regulators “failed” at their jobs. Publicly they “failed “ but in reality they actually did do their “job” which is to look the other way, then act surprised when bad things happen. Much like the politicians who helped create the pandemic environment that allowed this to happen.
It always amazed me that this scandal didn't take down the Bush administration. He was deeply conected to these con men, even riding around in their jet during the 2000 campaign. Phil Gram resigned as his wife was part of the management team.
52:16.... As mystical of a company that Enron was, I highly doubt that Dynegy was having "revelations" about the deal. Of course you meant reservations. 👍
@@HistoryintheDark You could make that argument! Thanks for your reply and have a great day! Good video btw. And did you know Enron was responsible for that gas leak in that mall in Puerto Rico that blew up? Interesting story and another shining example of how bad of a company they were.
In a nutshell, okay growth just wasn't enough for the CEOs. So they got sneaky and reported wealth that they simply didn't actually have. When that started to unravel, they went down a convoluted road of deceit while never addressing the actual problem. By the time it was clear what that problem was to those outside upper management, it was far too late.
In a capitalist system the point of a company is to make money. Now. Higher up want their money now. Investors want profits now. Sadly people think this is normal and a good thing. It's not because then the company only focuses on making money to the negligence of product/services and low level employees. And no the market doesn't self correct. In capitalism it normal for business to have a strong market hold and with businesses having all the power they can lobby government and also pay lower because everyone else pays lower and the low level employees are worked hard they can't save enough to get better jobs. Keeping people in or near poverty is part of the strategy. Before capitalism there were lots of businesses, you don't need capitalism to have commerce. A business should be there to produce products or services that benefit everyone (which includes making money). Low level workers are paid well and do a good job meaning product and services are quality which means the consumer gets quality which means they buy and the business makes money. Is it perfect? No. Will there still be bad actors? Yes. But it is better than a company who saves money at the expense of their workers. Who let workers die to save money. Who let consumers get hurt because paying them off is cheap compared to the money they make/save by not doing safety. Enron is not an outlier it is normal business practices in a capitalist society.
Lol. Republicans caused all of this but yeah, affordable college, affordable healthcare and living wages that the Democrats push are way more evil than this. You do you kiddo.
