Around a week ago, our global ethics class watched a very didactic documentary file called Enron: The smartest man in the room. Basically, it is talking about an corporation called Enron, and NOT to run business like them. Even though we all know that the philosophies of corporations are all just profits, Enron brought this to another level. But before all that, I’m going to briefly tell you what Enron is. According to little researches online, I found out that Enron is an energy company. In fact, Enron is one of the world’s largest energy companies. However, Enron’s greed took away it’s glory.
The CEO of Enron, Jeff Skilling is an extremely smart, and greedy man. He brought Enron to its climax with a special accounting called Mark to Market. Basically, it gave the owners the ability to hinder the company’s budgets and rewrite those values in anyways the company feels like it. Of cause Mark to Market is not as simple as this, but this is the most I can explain. So basically, Enron is lying to its stockholders about their investments and the profits they are getting. Basically, they are telling the world they are making millions off a project that haven’t even started. Some of their projects are even huge failures. Like when they went abroad to India, that project failed miserably. The power plane is left unfinished, all the money in that project is lost, but no one knows. Enron lied about that project, and people thought they did a great job in India. In respond to that, their stock went higher. For many people, even stockbrokers, they thought the price of a company’s stock represents how well the company is functioning. However Enron is actually loosing money this whole time. Their stock go rocket high while the business itself is falling day by day. If I would to use a metaphor for this, Enron will be like Taipei 101 without interiors. Enron is destined to collapse.
Enron is even connected to politics. Ken Lay, another key player in this corporation is very tightly connected to Bush Jr. I’m not entirely sure about the kind of connections they have, but from what the movie said, bush used a lot of helps from Ken, and in return, Enron is able to free themselves from some troubles. With these connections, Enron moved its target on California. They decided to run the state’s energy, and steal the energy from them. Basically, they shut off the state’s electricity so they can boost the stock price for them. A very complicated process, but they manage to pull it off.
Well, their lies didn’t last forever. After awhile, people started finding holes in their lies, and started fighting against them. Their Stock along with the company gone bankrupt in 24 days. All 20,000 of their employees went unemployed in a day. And of cause, all the leading heads, peoples like Jeff Skilling are sentenced to different times in jail. Even one of them committed suicide.
Jeff Skilling: Sentenced to 24 years and 4 month in Jail. Fined 45 million USD. Current status: Serving time!
Ken Lay: Died of heart attack before being sentenced to anything. Technically, he is not guilty of anything. Died on 5th of July 2006. 64 years old.
So, does any of that relate to my global ethics experience in my junior year? Yes. Referring back to a book we read, Ishmael, Enron is just like what the book is describing, a falling aircraft. The way Enron is trying to get rich is like how the aircraft is trying to accelerate while ignoring the law of aerodynamic and the direction they are going. The results of this falling aircraft is a sudden boom, and compare this with Enron, it is actually very similar.
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I’m thinking of a cool way to end this entry, like a sentence that will make the readers think a bit more, but I’m experiencing a serious brain dead at the moment. So, if you did took the time to read this blog entry, give me a sentence that I should use to end this entry.
My Blog Needs YOUR HELP *finger pointing at your face*
