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I really only knew that Enron had "cooked" the books, but this documentary takes you through it like F911 so you can understand what really happened and who conspired to make it happen.
The short explanation is that Enron was given permission to post their earnings in a legal but dishonest way. They would get an idea for a commodity to sell, and then just post the earnings they predicted, even if the deal never happened and they never made a penny. Then, they'd have this debt that they didn't want the investors to see. That included the small individual stock owners and the other banks. So, their #3 guy (forgive me but I'm awful with names) created a bunch of fake companies where he would list the debt and take it off Enron's books. One was called Out M. Yass: (Out My Ass). One was called "Death Star." On and on it went, and the large banks who were investing and making a ton off Enron looked the other way. The sad thing is, the individual investors, the middle class workers, who had their entire pensions in Enron, had no way of knowing that Enron had little or no assets to back up it's earnings. So the shell game continued, until one small time young, new journalist asked whether or not the stock was over valued. Then it was all over in a few weeks. Several of the men did jail time, but, no one got back their pensions.
The scariest thing of all is all the video of the CEO's lying through their teeth to the owners, that the company was solid. It's just like Bush saying we need to invade Iraq and destroy social security. They just kept saying it until it was true. Until they were taken away in handcuffs, and people's lives were ruined. It sounded totally familiar, because it's what we hear from the Bush administration every day. And thet even got one of their top guys in control of a US utilities commission. But Barbara Boxer fans can rejoice, cause she was the put bull hitting them with the tough questions at the hearings. God Bless Barbara Boxer.
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