Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

I found this documentary very well assembled, clearly focused and tremendously accessible. Also, horrifyingly depressing. It’s about the cavalier evil of the Enron corporation, whose traders took delight in bankrupting the elderly, manipulating the energy market and lying to boost profits. And when I say they took delight in it, I’m not imputing emotions to them based on no evidence: The film includes recorded phone conversations wherein they laugh at and celebrate just those feats of evil. Well, those and many more. If you want to see how morality can be flushed out of individuals and institutions, and the depths to which humans will sink when given free reign and financial encouragement to harm others, I’d suggest watching this film and maybe a documentary on the Third Reich. You’ll see that the biggest differences between Enron and National Socialism is that the Enron guys were more interested in stealing than killing, and they seemed to have a lot more fun doing it.