Rating: 
Summary: Greed and the Collapse of Enron
Review: I picked up this book and read it over a weekend. If one wants to learn about the very large egos behind the bankruptcy of Enron and how the corporate culture eventually led to accounting fraud this book has all the details. It will give you insight into each persons role in the collapse of the energy giant. I was able to follow the accounting fraud without difficulty, but was even more interested in the people that made the decisions. Readers will also empathize with the employees of Enron that followed their leaders into personal financial ruin - while the leaders were getting rich from selling stock. It becomes a sad realization that egos and greed can even ruin a company that was built on sound business decisions.
Rating: 
Summary: Sherron Watkins: Saint Or Sinner?
Review: I'm struggling with the question of whether Ms. Watkins can be trusted in the things she says and does. She observed (and some might contend was complicit in) and understood the wrongdoing, remained silent about it while she searched for a new job, then, as the walls were crumbling -- and still unwilling to challenge management -- she penned the anonymous memo, only standing up when it was absolutely safe to do so. Seems more self-serving than heroic. I'm generally not cynical, but it strikes me that every move Ms. Watkins publicly made has been calculated for personal benefit. The testimony, the speeches, the book, the television interviews ... is this all intended to chronicle the acts of the corporate criminals she detests, or is this how she scrubs off the stains of her own part in what happened? Keep in mind that Ms. Watkins was an officer, not a low-level employee; I suspect she could have done more, and earlier, before the damage became irreparable. While this book is written declaratively (and well -- kudos to Ms. Swartz on her journalism and word craft), I am left with the feeling that Ms. Watkins is white-washing herself and, sadly, has found new ways to profit from her association (perhaps involvement?) with one of the greatest scandals in the history of free enterprise. The lives of many employees and retail shareholders were destroyed. I wonder how they feel about the money Ms. Watkins is making by selling this story. I make no accusations against Ms. Watkins, I'm just reflecting on what I have observed in watching her promotional activites since this story broke. I've never been an Enron shareholder or employee, I don't know Ms. Watkins and I may be way off base in my remarks here. I hope that I am, but my instincts and business experience tells me I'm not. [Note: this is not an anonymous post.]
Rating:
Summary: A whistle-blower tells the fascinating story of Enron
Review: Imagine the life of Sherron Watkins: a posh job with one of the most successful energy companies in the world, all of the amenities that come with wining-and-dining important contacts while negotiating deals worth millions --- and a nagging suspicion that something within the company you're working for isn't quite right. There were thousands of Enron employees, all with the same upward mobility and satisfying salaries that Sherron Watkins possessed. So what set Watkins apart from them? It was the fact that she was willing to risk sacrificing it all to expose the corrupt practices that had made Enron so profitable. In POWER FAILURE, the entire history of Enron is explored, from its inception in 1985 to its demise in 2001. Written by Mimi Swartz with assistance from whistle-blower Sherron Watkins, this book will take the reader on a journey that includes Enron's earliest successes and failures, the super-charged management conferences, the politically incorrect Enron trading floors and the Senate Hearing Room's investigation and subsequent trial. But POWER FAILURE is much more than just an expose on a corrupt corporation. It also provides a frightening view on what the big-business atmosphere has become. The story of Enron shows how delicate the balance of politics, money and business practices is, and how thin the line between legal and illegal can be. Swartz and Watkins effectively tell the story of Enron without a hint of tabloid exploitation. And with all the exploitations that occurred within Enron, that's nothing short of a miracle. They give an accurate, honest perspective on all of the events that took place in the history of the corporation and portray the characters of Enron without bias. That's not to say that there's no negative statements made about people throughout the book --- just that they're given in a diplomatic manner. The book is written in an informative yet entertaining manner, complete with entertaining sidebars and humorous anecdotes to keep the reader's attention. And they have included plenty of pictures to point out just who the evildoers are. This is a must read for business people, tax evaders, anyone who plans to cheat the system, or the average Joe who wants to know what really happened at Enron. --- Reviewed by Melissa Brown
Rating:
Summary: Must Read
Review: Ken Lay was the product of a very religious background in a small Midwestern town. During work on his PhD in economics, he became enamored of the world of stocks. He parlayed InterNorth, a small energy company into Enron. He was a rich man, having made $4 million in stock value increases from the merger of Houston Gas into InterNorth, later renamed Enron. He was also the highest paid CEO in the United States. The company's strengths were also its weakness: the constant risk-taking; the high debt load to ward off potential takeovers; "impassioned embrace of deregulation;" constant reorganization; and instant adoption of the hottest new business ideas. They were soon struggling for cash. In the meantime, Lay had created a new culture at Enron. It was his belief that all one had to do was hire the best and the brightest, provide a free environment, and things would take care of themselves. He also had trouble saying no to anyone. He hired an old friend to be the "bad guy," but it soon became apparent to all that if you made money for the company you could get whatever you wanted. Watkins was hailed in 2001, following the collapse of Enron, as a heroine for her "whistle-blowing." Whether her actions actually constitute that appellation is open to question. Certainly she was an insider, and her account reveals a great deal more of the financial shenanigans in greater detail than the previous book I reviewed, Anatomy of Greed. She interacted constantly with Lay, Skilling and Fastow, and if she got really nervous about what she was seeing, perhaps whistle-blowing was just a way of protecting her posterior. What started out as a new paradigm, a different way of delivering energy, soon became a case of the blind leading the blind, or a corporate version of Dumb and Dumber, as the board and Enron employees began creating numerous new ways of hiding losses, even making losses look like revenue. It was a huge, ever-increasing house of cards. Watkins is an accountant and naturally had a strong sense of the financial improprieties the company had embarked upon, but the impending doom she warned of in her now-famous memo to Lay should have been obvious to everyone. Enron's own head of research said presciently, "Every era gets the clowns it deserves." If they ever make a movie of this book, it will have to be a comedy. It is astonishing how stupid many of the "best and brightest" graduates of American business schools were, as they bellied up to the trough of corporate greed. Sherron made an attempt to meet with Ken Lay, but first she had to convince his personal secretary to arrange a meeting. The secretary informed Watkins that "Ken gravitates toward good news. . . ." It did not bode well for the meeting. Another insider told her to make the presentation as simple as possible and eliminate any accounting jargon. She obliged and reworked her presentation so that her two-year-old daughter could understand it. The meeting was a flop, and it was clear to her that Lay could not understand - or perhaps did not want to understand - a thing she was talking about. Ironically, Osama Bin Laden's exploits barely dented the US economy. Lay's machinations and the subsequent stock free fall provided a vicious slambang.
Rating:
Summary: Sherron Watkins is No Hero
Review: Mimi Swartz writes a wonderful story. The insight into the personalities of Jeffrey Skilling and Andy Fastow. Where she loses it is when she tries to make us believe that Sherron Watkins is heroic. Baloney! Ms. Watkins was just as greedy, just as nasty, just as self-serving as the rest of them. She only wrote the memo to Ken Lay to protect her job, not from viewpoint of a corporate savior. She was just worried as to where she is going to get her obscene bonus. Her salary was excessive to the point of disgust. She still has the arrogance of an Arthur Andersen accountant. I would love to have been her boss as well as Andy Fastow's boss. They both would have been on the street before sundown. Thank you, Mimi, for a well written book. Shame on you Sherron for your greed and lack of ethics.
Rating:
Summary: Sherron Watkins is No Hero
Review: Mimi Swartz writes a wonderful story. The insight into the personalities of Jeffrey Skilling and Andy Fastow. Where she loses it is when she tries to make us believe that Sherron Watkins is heroic. Baloney! Ms. Watkins was just as greedy, just as nasty, just as self-serving as the rest of them. She only wrote the memo to Ken Lay to protect her job, not from viewpoint of a corporate savior. She was just worried as to where she is going to get her obscene bonus. Her salary was excessive to the point of disgust. She still has the arrogance of an Arthur Andersen accountant. I would love to have been her boss as well as Andy Fastow's boss. They both would have been on the street before sundown. Thank you, Mimi, for a well written book. Shame on you Sherron for your greed and lack of ethics.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping page turner
Review: Power Failure is a fascinating, shocking look inside the rotten core of one of the most celebrated companies of our time. This book grippingly explains how Enron went from a stuffy pipeline company to flashy corporate star by committing massive fraud. Why and how the press, the analysts, the accountants and the regulators failed in their jobs and went along for the ride is lucidly portrayed. Full of outrageous characters and incidents, this beautifully written book will have you telling anyone nearby, "You've got to hear this!" Power Failure will help you understand why the 90s bubble burst and give you an understanding of corporate manipulation. You will be better prepared the next time the "most brilliant company around" emerges.
Rating:
Summary: Poster company for 401K diversification!
Review: POWER FAILURE is quite the eye-opener on how much harm a corrupt business can do. It tought us that we can no longer trust big business like we used to. The pilfering of billions of dollars is beyond inexcusable. These people stole funds that most of us "common folk" would consider to be a winning lottery ticket. And they did it consistently.
Sherron Alexander should be held in the highest esteem for the unrelenting work she did to let people know what was happening at "The World's Leading Company". Bravo Sharron, thanks a billion!
This book is a must-read for anyone involved in corporate business.
Rating: 
Summary: A convoluted grid of a tale
Review: Power Failure was interesting and well enough written, considering the complexity of the issues leading up to and surrounding Enron's final debacle. It is not surprising that I myself found Mimi Swartz's account to be esoteric despite protagonist-and-credited-coauthor CPA Sherron Watkins's nod to Swartz's ability to clarify events. This is because when matters turn to topics of numbers my eyes tend to glaze over with what my son (also a CPA) ascribes to 'math anxiety.' However, it is apparent that not even the experts were astute enough to call Enron on what even I can clearly deduce from this book were years of fudging issues. Enrons structure was a tangled web of entities cobbled together in ad hoc fashion. It seems very few people were given the whole story anyway. As did other readers, I too wondered why Watkins waited so long to blow the whistle, but in that environment where power was a sad substitute for common sense, perhaps I too might have waited, especially when it did not seem that any attractive alternate was looming were I to quit. And it is difficult to play the role of a Cassandra in an environment where people are making gobs of money. According to this book, those in charge had a hubristic attitude that uncooperative people didn not 'get it,' and every problem could and should be handled by Enron?s public-relations department. These efforts read, especially with hindsight, like condescending semiotics, such as an upbeat survey of employee opinions taken while the business was collapsing. It is depressing to wonder if this cycle, despite herculean barn-cleaning in the business community, will repeat itself, but the chances are it will. After the slash-and-burn tactics following the early 1980s slump, one would think that business would have been humbled or at least more careful. Apparently not. In an era of instant gratification, old lessons are quickly forgotten.
Rating:
Summary: A convoluted grid of a tale
Review: Power Failure was interesting and well enough written, considering the complexity of the issues leading up to and surrounding Enron's final debacle. It is not surprising that I myself found Mimi Swartz's account to be esoteric despite protagonist-and-credited-coauthor CPA Sherron Watkins's nod to Swartz's ability to clarify events. This is because when matters turn to topics of numbers my eyes tend to glaze over with what my son (also a CPA) ascribes to 'math anxiety.' However, it is apparent that not even the experts were astute enough to call Enron on what even I can clearly deduce from this book were years of fudging issues. Enrons structure was a tangled web of entities cobbled together in ad hoc fashion. It seems very few people were given the whole story anyway. As did other readers, I too wondered why Watkins waited so long to blow the whistle, but in that environment where power was a sad substitute for common sense, perhaps I too might have waited, especially when it did not seem that any attractive alternate was looming were I to quit. And it is difficult to play the role of a Cassandra in an environment where people are making gobs of money. According to this book, those in charge had a hubristic attitude that uncooperative people didn not 'get it,' and every problem could and should be handled by Enron?s public-relations department. These efforts read, especially with hindsight, like condescending semiotics, such as an upbeat survey of employee opinions taken while the business was collapsing. It is depressing to wonder if this cycle, despite herculean barn-cleaning in the business community, will repeat itself, but the chances are it will. After the slash-and-burn tactics following the early 1980s slump, one would think that business would have been humbled or at least more careful. Apparently not. In an era of instant gratification, old lessons are quickly forgotten.
| 
