Brown Sludge

Enron : Monkey On A Stick

December 15th, 2005

On banana plantations in India, whenever a monkey is caught stealing from the crop – the farmer kills the monkey and then immediately impales the monkey’s body on a stick and places it in a prominent place to serve as an example to all the other monkeys who might be entertaining thoughts of stealing bananas.

Next month Ken Lay goes on trial for his part in the Enron debacle.

In their wonderful book “The Smartest Guys In The Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron” Forbes writers Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind do a Joe Pesci impersonation and take an aluminum baseball bat to a grinning Ken Lay, Jeffery “no one gets in to see the Wizard” Skilling and numbers man Andy Fastow.

McLean and Elkind manage an incredible tight-rope walk of explaining the intricate (and sometimes tedious) minutiae of the alleged accounting scams to keep company short-falls covered in a cloak of invisibility and yet still manage to keep their focus on the corporate culture of entitlement and arrogance that is nothing short of breath-taking.

The movie manages that tightrope walk just as successfully. It is a must-see.

From the movie – a transcript of two employees discussing the anger of California Ratepayers (graphic language) :

Employee #1: “They’re f*****g taking all the money back from you guys? All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?”

Employee #2: “Yeah, grandma Millie, man. Yeah, now she wants her f*****g money back for all the power you’ve charged right up, jammed right up her a** for f*****g $250 a megawatt hour.”

Yes… I have actually seen conservative pundits throwing their bodies in front of this behavior in the misguided belief they are defending ‘a free market’ ideal – as opposed to just validating everything every left wing loony has ever said about conservatives caring about money over human suffering.

Get ready – because all of this is muck is eventually going to be raked again during the trial(s) of “Kenny Boy” (George Bush’s pet name for Mr. Lay) and his associates. If you think that the left isn’t going to make as much out of Lay’s cozy relationship with the Bush administration as it possibly can in it’s build-up to an election cycle – you’re as crazy as Howard Dean.

The opportunity to paint the Republican party and conservatives in general with blood from soaring energy costs when they’re fingerprints are all over the deregulation and price cap knives is going to be enormous – and the left would have to be idiots not to make it the centerpiece of any ideological discussion. The ability to inexorably link the right with the pain people are feeling for having to pay extortionary rates for heating their homes and filling their gas tanks will be absolutely irresistible.

Both book and movie should be required reading/viewing for anyone who claims to be concerned about the spreading cancer of corporatism.

Now that the congressional hearings are (apparently) over – and gasoline prices are beginning to climb again (told ya so) for (apparently) no reason – and I keep being told that my gas bills (my home uses mostly natural gas appliances) are going to double or perhaps triple – I’m reminded that congress has spent the last 5 or 6 years calling for an investigation into the rise of natural gas prices as well.

I wonder if those people whom congress (apparently) suspects are manipulating the markets to artificially drive up gasoline and natural gas prices have seen or read “The Smartest Guys in the Room” and more than anything else I wonder if media images of an orange jump-suit clad energy executive being frog-marched off to jail with their hands cuffed behind their back causes them to develop this little knot in the pit of their stomach.

I sure hope so.

I hope to be approved on my affiliate program in a few days – so you can click-buy the book from a truly independent source as opposed to one of the Brown Sludge book outlets. Link soon I hope. Video too.

It’s not enough to Talk the Talk.
You gotta Walk the Walk.

The Walk:

No Brown Sludge Monster bookstores here. I only support independent booksellers.

Left Bank Books is a cultural icon here where I live. Buy your copy of the books I review (including this one) from them.

The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron

Click here to buy it from a true independent.

Entry Filed under: The Right Has It Wrong