Paperjam

The Smartest Guys In The Room

Film // Jim // 22nd July 2006

Wednesday evening and I am supposed to be off to see Pirates Of the Caribbean 2 with the Neilson brothers (a bit like the Kray twins but I’m not quite sure which is the totally psychotic gay one yet). Unfortunately, it’s a sell out. Fortunately, I noticed the other day that The Smartest Guys In The Room was playing at the Spa Centre.

After persuading absolutely no-one to go with me I toddle along to the theatre near Jephson Gardens. The cinema is on the left hand side of the building and is a bit like the sort of cinema you get at poxy universities (like the one that I went too) except with comfier seats and a bit of legroom. There are only about 10-15 people in, when the adverts start up it is a bit too loud, someone has a word and they turn it down. In a word: Cosy.

TSGITR is all about the collapse of Enron, a huge power generating and trading company, a few years back. An event that left the senior management with millions, the rank and file with precisely fuck all and the majority of shareholders absolutely stuffed, which serves them right, the greedy bastards.

The tale of the rise and fall of Enron is something of a fable, illustrating the potential pitfalls of a highly capitalist dogma and in particular the corruption at the heart of a supposedly free-market economy.

Enron grew fat thanks to de-regulation of power markets, some very shady futures trading and the sort of accounting practices that allowed them to book profits that they might make in the future as being tangible in the present.
It was all about the share price, as long as that kept rising things were rosy, what now appears to have been major fraud was an accepted business practice. Eventually when the wheels started to come off, Enron did some absolutely shocking things to try and stay afloat; Manoeuvring Arnie into the governorship of California for one.

The film concentrates on the antics of the “Guys” running the place, particularly founder Ken Lay and CEO Jeff Skillen. Endless airbrushed corporate photos of this pair of self-serving bastards litter the film, nicely illustrating the nature of their increasing ego as Enron grew richer and they milked the place for all it was worth. One of their lieutenants who deserves special mention is the humourless stripper-fanatic, Lou Pai, who got out early and now owns half of New Mexico, or something.

To most people, I would imagine the news that a bunch of high-powered businessmen were cooking the books to line their own pockets is not really all that shocking. The really scary stuff in this documentary are the links between the Enron and the politicians (particularly the venal Bush family) who have control over the laws and regulations that are intended to protect the supply of vital resources such as, say, electricity. With such controls eroded the corrupt likes of Enron can easily exploit the practical flaws in the conceptually perfect market while making a killing at the expense of everyone else.

The triumph of TSGITR is that it puts forward the story of what happened at Enron without looking through spectacles of any particular political hue. The journalist who wrote the article and book that TSGITR is based on worked for Fortune magazine, so hardly a Marxist firebrand. Despite this editorial neutrality, the viewer is left in no doubt that this sort of thing is almost certainly happening in other corporations, most likely with the assent of our elected representatives and there is probably not all that much that anyone can do about it. Ho hum.

The Smartest Links On This Page:

Film web site

Usual sort of thing, trailers and further info.

Enron scandal at-a-glance

Handy article from the BBC explaining the whole situation

Enron.com

"Enron is in the midst of liquidating its remaining operations and distributing its assets to its creditors."