Power Failure

The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron

De: Mimi Swartz, Sherron Watkins

Narrado por: Henry Levya

“They’re still trying to hide the weenie,” thought Sherron Watkins as she read a newspaper clipping about Enron two weeks before Christmas, 2001. . . It quoted [CFO] Jeff McMahon addressing the company’s creditors and cautioning them against a rash judgment. “Don’t assume that there is a smoking gun.”
Sherron knew Enron well enough to know that the company was in extreme spin mode…

Power Failure is the electrifying behind-the-scenes story of the collapse of Enron, the high-flying gas and energy company touted as the poster child of the New Economy that, in its hubris, had aspired to be “The World’s Leading Company,” and had briefly been the seventh largest corporation in America.

Written by prizewinning journalist Mimi Swartz, and substantially based on the never-before-published revelations of former Enron vice-president Sherron Watkins, as well as hundreds of other interviews, Power Failure shows the human face beyond the greed, arrogance, and raw ambition that fueled the company’s meteoric rise in the late 1990s. At the dawn of the new century, Ken Lay’s and Jeff Skilling's faces graced the covers of business magazines, and Enron’s money oiled the political machinery behind George W. Bush’s election campaign. But as Wall Street analysts sang Enron’s praises, and its stock spiraled dizzyingly into the stratosphere, the company’s leaders were madly scrambling to manufacture illusory profits, hide its ballooning debt, and bully Wall Street into buying its fictional accounting and off-balance-sheet investment vehicles. The story of Enron’s fall is a morality tale writ large, performed on a stage with an unforgettable array of props and side plots, from parking lots overflowing with Boxsters and BMWs to hot-house office affairs and executive tantrums.

Among the cast of characters Mimi Swartz and Sherron Watkins observe with shrewd Texas eyes and an insider’s perspective are: CEO Ken Lay, Enron’s “outside face,” who was more interested in playing diplomat and paving the road to a political career than in managing Enron’s high-testosterone, anything-goes culture; Jeff Skilling, the mastermind behind Enron’s mercenary trading culture, who transformed himself from a nerdy executive into the personification of millennial cool; Rebecca Mark, the savvy and seductive head of Enron’s international division, who was Skilling’s sole rival to take over the company; and Andy Fastow, whose childish pranks early in his career gave way to something far more destructive. Desperate to be a player in Enron’s deal-making, trader-oriented culture, Fastow transformed Enron’s finance department into a “profit center,” creating a honeycomb of financial entities to bolster Enron’s “profits,” while diverting tens of millions of dollars into his own pockets

An unprecedented chronicle of Enron’s shocking collapse, Power Failure should take its place alongside the classics of previous decades – Barbarians at the Gate and Liar’s Poker – as one of the cautionary tales of our times.©2003 Mimi Swartz; (P)2003 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“A lucid account of the Enron debacle that may be the best informed and best written to date.” —Andrew Hill, Financial Times

“A compelling history of Enron . . . offering a savvy interpretation of its subject.” —Washington Post Book World

“Paints the most detailed portrait yet of the company’s ambitious executives and toxic culture.” —Business Week

“Colorful, movie-treatment narrative style” —Entertainment Weekly


“The book most Enron watchers have been waiting for.” —New York Daily News

“Reads like Tom Wolfe himself.” —Daily Telegraph

A fairly surface review of the Enron scandal

Generally, this book is a fairly high-level review of the Enron saga and feels a little surface and lacking depth compared to a book like The Smartest Guys in the Room. The one area that it excels, likely due to the area of expertise of Sherron Watkins, is digging into the details of the off-balance vehicles at the heart of the Enron scandal. While those vehicles were extremely complex and still hard to understand after listening to this book, I came away with a better understanding of their structure than I did from reading Smartest Guys.

A good version

A very good inside version. Very readable. Gets over the atomosphere and culture inside Enron aswell as the the accounting.

Complex . . . but good.

This is a complex tale that doesn't stop to educate the listener on business and investment terms. The minutia of the business transactions may frustrate some listeners, however the big picture should be easily understood by most all. It is a shocking realization of how corporations can manipulate their earnings to meet earnings projections and satisfy stockholders.

A very readable story on a complex subject

I really did not believe that it could be possible to tell the Enron story without requiring the reader to take the cpa exam first - not to mention that it would be possible to LISTEN to the story and gain some insight!

Mostly, the impossible task has been accomplished. The story on greed and criminal conduct is compelling, but what impresses me is that after listening to Power Failure, my own reading of Enron indictments in the business press have been enhanced. To follow the book, there is no need to understand the dirty details of SPEs and accounting entries to understand the reprehensible nature of Enron's officials and the behavior of the public accountants, lawyers, and investment bankers that condoned and promoted the fraud. The book is more setting the scene for judgment of a general corporate behavior rather than revealing and arguing specific transgressions against reigning law.

Power Failure is surprisingly easy listen - you do not find yourself wishing for a paper book where you can re-read a passage to pick up on a fine line violated by the principals - the book spells out Enron's actions in broad strokes that can be understood by most everyone.

The vantage point of the authors do make you wish for more, though. It's not that there is a lack of a smoking gun - Enron was a gun range (to torture the analogy). I suppose what I wish for most, would be a "where are they now" - what happened (or, is happening) to the many people feeding off the trough of Enron... And after listening to this book, I tend to believe that there are a large number of people of bad character untouched by the SEC's "dragnet".

ENRON (Light)

A light read that broadly covers the rise and fall of ENRON. If you are looking for juicy gossip you won't find a lot of it in here...nor will you find much in detail...nor will you find much outside of the author's knowledge. All-in-all a moderate recommendation but I would suggest that there are better recountings elsewhere. Rate this one about a 3 - recommended with reservations. A good "beach" listen.