The smartest guys in the room Or a Conspiracy of Fools

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Dear Dreamers,
I recently read this book - ' Conspiracy of Fools: A true Story by Kurt Eichenwald'
This is a book that I read about Enron. The most detailed version of the Enron - the build , the peak, the pedestal and the implosion of a Forbes 50 company.  Written by the Wall street journalist who covered the scandal from its beginning to its end.It focused entirely on the realms and realms of information and gave a very interesting account of the how Kenneth Lay built the company from scratch, hired Jeff Skilling- that brought on board  the culture that got the company to the peak of the hill and then over the cliff. While reading the book ( and I am a scientist so I confess I just skimmed over the accounting details when it got too deep) you realize that ambition and greed are two sides of the same coin. You never know when it starts and the other starts taking over- and Andy Fastow, the CFO of the company was at the epicenter of the wrong doings and illegal deals made by the company. While Lay and Skilling are in charge of the company, they are often ignorant of the details of what is going on in the company and choose to focus on other things, brighter things that need attention. Fastow on his part delivers the required numbers and his bosses never ask him how. I was forming my own opinion while reading the book. it is the opinion ( I later realize the writer wants me to have)
Following this I watched the documentary- 'The smartest guys in the room'. And it shows an entirely different perspective of the company. Fastow and all the others drawn into this are merely a reaction. A reaction to a fiercely competitive culture , where being smart about making money is the only thing that gets you the bonus.  A company that thrives solely on the next big idea. They really were the smartest guys in the room and they did great things- but at some point the competition, the profit margin and purely ambition that fuels this start suffocating you and you start running out of the next big idea, then what do you do? Do you just admit that this cant be done? or you try some small scam that will make you money and no one will know? soon this spirals out of control and at a company like enron where a million bucks was small change you are a couple of billions in debt before you notice this. On paper and technically Andy was the bad guy. But who pushed him in that corner, who didn't pay attention to how he was making his money and just wanted to look at the brighter side of things?
Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay.
And so you realize that while you want to blame someone when you read a story like this. while you badly want a villain to hate, there exists a story from he point of view of the villain that you just didn't know. And perspective- with which you write the story, with which you real the story all play a role in how you choose your hero.
Make sense? What do you think?
Bye for now...
S

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