The smartest guys in the room
I’ve only just seen the 2005 documentary film “Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room” [my review here].
There’s special chill in seeing this work through the prism on the recent collapse in the global banking system. It makes you realise that, while the guys at the top of Enron may have been particularly creative/crooked, the financial framework that allowed them to get away with massive fraud for so long – a system of deregulation and self-denial – equally permitted the excessive exuberance that brought down the home loans market and then the financial institutions themselves all around the world.
Millions upon millions have lost jobs and homes and livelihoods because regulators and politicians were slaves to the free market. We need new transparent and accountable regulatory systems and they need to be kept in place throughout the inevitable economic cycle. We cannot afford to keep relearning history.
February 18th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Great movie, huh?
I loved it. Mark Cuban produces great movies.
Cuban (who also sometimes delves into media policy, journalism and newspaper issues) has a great blog called BlogMaverick.
Talk soon,
Russ