Mimi Swartz,Sherron Watkins
â€œTheyâ€™re still trying to hide the weenie,â€ thought Sherron Watkins as she read a newspaper clipping about Enron two weeks before Christmas, 2001. . . It quoted [CFO] Jeff McMahon addressing the companyâ€™s creditors and cautioning them against a rash judgment. â€œDonâ€™t assume that there is a smoking gun.â€,Sherron knew Enron well enough to know that the company was in extreme spin modeâ€¦,Power Failure, is the electrifying behind-the-scenes story of the collapse of Enron, the high-flying gas and energy company touted as the poster child of the New Economy that, in its hubris, had aspired to be â€œThe Worldâ€™s Leading Company,â€ and had briefly been the seventh largest corporation in America.,Written by prizewinning journalist Mimi Swartz, and substantially based on the never-before-published revelations of former Enron vice-president Sherron Watkins, as well as hundreds of other interviews, ,Power Failure, shows the human face beyond the greed, arrogance, and raw ambition that fueled the companyâ€™s meteoric rise in the late 1990s. At the dawn of the new century, Ken Layâ€™s and Jeff Skilling's faces graced the covers of business magazines, and Enronâ€™s money oiled the political machinery behind George W. Bushâ€™s election campaign. But as Wall Street analysts sang Enronâ€™s praises, and its stock spiraled dizzyingly into the stratosphere, the companyâ€™s leaders were madly scrambling to manufacture illusory profits, hide its ballooning debt, and bully Wall Street into buying its fictional accounting and off-balance-sheet investment vehicles. The story of Enronâ€™s fall is a morality tale writ large, performed on a stage with an unforgettable array of props and side plots, from parking lots overflowing with Boxsters and BMWs to hot-house office affairs and executive tantrums., ,Among the cast of characters Mimi Swartz and Sherron Watkins observe with shrewd Texas eyes and an insiderâ€™s perspective are: CEO Ken Lay, Enronâ€™s â€œoutside face,â€ who was more interested in playing diplomat and paving the road to a political career than in managing Enronâ€™s high-testosterone, anything-goes culture; Jeff Skilling, the mastermind behind Enronâ€™s mercenary trading culture, who transformed himself from a nerdy executive into the personification of millennial cool; Rebecca Mark, the savvy and seductive head of Enronâ€™s international division, who was Skillingâ€™s sole rival to take over the company; and Andy Fastow, whose childish pranks early in his career gave way to something far more destructive. Desperate to be a player in Enronâ€™s deal-making, trader-oriented culture, Fastow transformed Enronâ€™s finance department into a â€œprofit center,â€ creating a honeycomb of financial entities to bolster Enronâ€™s â€œprofits,â€ while diverting tens of millions of dollars into his own pockets,An unprecedented chronicle of Enronâ€™s shocking collapse, ,Power Failure, should take its place alongside the classics of previous decades â€“ ,Barbarians at the Gate, and ,Liarâ€™s Poker, â€“ as one of the cautionary tales of our times.,From the Hardcover edition.
Business,Nonfiction,History,Economics,Finance,Economics,Crime,True Crime,Biography,Buisness,Audiobook
Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron