redstar2000
28th February 2004, 20:27
Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron by Robert Bryce (New York, PublicAffairs, 2002), ISBN 1-58648-138-X
"Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered!" -- "folk" saying in the Texas oil business.
Here is a delightful book that both communists and capitalists will enjoy reading...though perhaps for somewhat different reasons.
Capitalists will like it because it does not "preach" against "greed" or "ego" as such...it simply points out the consequences of stupid greed and unjustified ego.
Enron was not brought down by simple thievery, reckless expenditures on unnecessary luxuries, or even the fact that many of its executives were porking one another's "executive secretaries".
In the end, these "masters of the universe" were grossly incompetent...or, as they say in Texas, "they couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the directions were printed on the heel".
They made some of the dumbest business deals in the history of capitalism!
Of course, they had help -- many of the world's most prestigious investment banks fell all over each other to jump on Enron's bandwagon...managing to lose billions themselves in the process.
Which gets to the reason that communists will like this book. It punctures the "myth" of the "super-intelligent management" that's "needed" to "run a complex economy".
All of the Enron players had masters degrees in business from major universities; they were all "bright, young, energetic", etc. And all of them personally made fortunes even while Enron went from bad to worse to totally fucked.
And they were all utterly clueless when it came to the area of their alleged "expertise".
There are many really hilarious episodes in this book. One of the funniest is when Alan Greenspan showed up at an Enron function (within a few weeks of the end) and gave a little ten-minute talk on the importance of "integrity" in business. I can't imagine that people weren't rolling on the floor, laughing their asses off.
The author himself is occasionally funny unintentionally. Towards the end of the book, he mumbles the usual liturgical language of reform -- strengthen the SEC, stop "conflicts of interest", blah, blah, blah.
I'm reading this and thinking to myself: the "next Enron" is happening right now...and when it blows up, guys like this are going to say the same things.
They never learn.
But we do.
:redstar2000:
The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.vze.com)
A site about communist ideas
"Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered!" -- "folk" saying in the Texas oil business.
Here is a delightful book that both communists and capitalists will enjoy reading...though perhaps for somewhat different reasons.
Capitalists will like it because it does not "preach" against "greed" or "ego" as such...it simply points out the consequences of stupid greed and unjustified ego.
Enron was not brought down by simple thievery, reckless expenditures on unnecessary luxuries, or even the fact that many of its executives were porking one another's "executive secretaries".
In the end, these "masters of the universe" were grossly incompetent...or, as they say in Texas, "they couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the directions were printed on the heel".
They made some of the dumbest business deals in the history of capitalism!
Of course, they had help -- many of the world's most prestigious investment banks fell all over each other to jump on Enron's bandwagon...managing to lose billions themselves in the process.
Which gets to the reason that communists will like this book. It punctures the "myth" of the "super-intelligent management" that's "needed" to "run a complex economy".
All of the Enron players had masters degrees in business from major universities; they were all "bright, young, energetic", etc. And all of them personally made fortunes even while Enron went from bad to worse to totally fucked.
And they were all utterly clueless when it came to the area of their alleged "expertise".
There are many really hilarious episodes in this book. One of the funniest is when Alan Greenspan showed up at an Enron function (within a few weeks of the end) and gave a little ten-minute talk on the importance of "integrity" in business. I can't imagine that people weren't rolling on the floor, laughing their asses off.
The author himself is occasionally funny unintentionally. Towards the end of the book, he mumbles the usual liturgical language of reform -- strengthen the SEC, stop "conflicts of interest", blah, blah, blah.
I'm reading this and thinking to myself: the "next Enron" is happening right now...and when it blows up, guys like this are going to say the same things.
They never learn.
But we do.
:redstar2000:
The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.vze.com)
A site about communist ideas