ENRON: Not too smart

Last month I attended the regional premiere of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room in Austin. Filmmaker Alex Gibney, along with reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind on whose book the movie was based, spoke to the audience after the screening. Enron: TSGITR weaves through a paper and electronic trail of a scandal that still unravels. How much more timely could a film be?
Taking questions from the packed house, Gibney noted that a number of people feel whistleblower Sherron Watkins acted out of a profit motive although this was not mentioned in the film. “In my view she didn’t know about the fraud for a long time. But it’s inaccurate that she is a whistleblower because the first person she reported this to was Ken Lay,” he said.
Responding to a question about why he neglected referring to Clinton era deregulators in the film Gibney declared “There were advantages that the Clinton administration gave to Enron but they were not as great as the way in which the Bush family helped Enron, early on then later on.” McLean added: “It was in the waning years of the Clinton administration that the commodities futures trading commission passed a rule that exempted Enron’s trading operations from any kind of oversight. It was a widespread deregulatory ethos that prevailed during all the 1990s.”