The book, “The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron” was written by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind and was published in 2003. It was all about the company of Enron and the downfall of it all and the scandals associated with it. Enron was an American energy, commodities, and services company which was located in Houston, Texas. At one point in time, it was the 7th largest company worth almost about $70 billion. There were many scandals involved in all of this, but before I get into detail about those, the book says how fast Enron declined and went downhill. They collapsed and went bankrupt in about 24 days. They were known for being America’s largest corporate bankruptcy. The collapse resulted in many criminal
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To sum up some of the things that McLean and Elkind described was that the people who were “higher up,” were forming fake companies and tricking people into investing money into them, doing things such as convincing people to buy fake stocks. Enron also created the so called “California Energy Crisis” and the fact that there was never a true shortage of power in California. It was proven that this was fake people overheard phone calls, which involved Enron leaders/employees asking plant managers to shut down plants for “repair.” About 40% of California’s energy industry was shut down by Enron and they rose the pries almost 9%. The book also tells us how Andrew Fastow, CFO, created a completely fake company where people were investing their money into something that was not real. All of the money that was created from this so called “business,” was pocketed by Fastow. So he basically stole money right from people’s hands. They were also trying to sell their electricity to people in other countries. Some of these countries couldn’t afford it at all, so they had to stop in the middle of building the plant because they realized they couldn’t afford it, which obviously caused Enron to lose some
To sum up some of the things that McLean and Elkind described was that the people who were “higher up,” were forming fake companies and tricking people into investing money into them, doing things such as convincing people to buy fake stocks. Enron also created the so called “California Energy Crisis” and the fact that there was never a true shortage of power in California. It was proven that this was fake people overheard phone calls, which involved Enron leaders/employees asking plant managers to shut down plants for “repair.” About 40% of California’s energy industry was shut down by Enron and they rose the pries almost 9%. The book also tells us how Andrew Fastow, CFO, created a completely fake company where people were investing their money into something that was not real. All of the money that was created from this so called “business,” was pocketed by Fastow. So he basically stole money right from people’s hands. They were also trying to sell their electricity to people in other countries. Some of these countries couldn’t afford it at all, so they had to stop in the middle of building the plant because they realized they couldn’t afford it, which obviously caused Enron to lose some