You learn something new every day; what did you learn today? Submit interesting and specific facts about something that you just found out here.
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TIL that tapes revealed that Enron shut down a power station in California and created an artificial power shortage, deliberately aggravating the 2001 California Energy Crisis, so they could raise prices and cost residents billions in surcharges.
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you should watch "enron - the smartest guys in the room" to learn the full story. really good documentary and well worth a watch
Hey - it's on Netflix.
Lets watch it and chill!
I'm watching it now. Only 1/3 the way through and those guys are fucking scumbags.
Its important to remember when watching those type of docs that they very much have a message they want to shove down your throat, same deal with Blackfish.
Not saying they are wrong, in either case, but don't just blindly believe them either.
In this case, it isn't really about pushing a message as it is showing you what the hell the whole thing was about.
I remember watching all the Enron stuff unfold, but at the time I didn't quite understand it completely. After watching the documentary and then rethinking about everything I saw and heard at the time and then going in and looking up my own information it all made a lot more sense.
Message...what exactly is the message in exposing illegal activity?
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I came here to say just that.
A bunch of scumbags.
"You said long term growth and chill" -investors
Only if you keep your pants on
No way I don't want to get pregnant.
Or as Cosby calls it, netflix and pill.
I'll add it to my list of shows I'll forget about
It's actually worth reading the book. It really, really showed me that what happened to Enron was not an unpredictable fluke; it was the logical ending of a lot of people with a history of low-level corruption and repeated lapses of ethics, who kept getting promoted because it was the path of least resistance.
I lived through the end stages of Enron (not as an employee, but a lot of my friends and neighbors worked there) and all of them knew it was too good to be true, but they all just figured the music would still be playing when they got a seat.
The book is much more neutral and yet I felt even worse about the people responsible. Such evil people.
At the same time, I was kinda in awe at how they gamed the system - I'm not saying I respect them for it, but some of these employees were absolute geniuses who ultimately used their talents to maximize their own personal gains. They could have been so much more.
While the documentary was good, there were some things I did not like about it. For example, during the trial of Jeff Skilling, they spliced a few non-related, out of context frames to make it seem like Jeff was explaining his position about not being and knowing certain accounting things because he isn't an accountant, the judge seemingly not believing and acting hard on him, and him consequently flustering and panicking as to why they didn't believe him. Thus framing it like he had something to hide (which he obviously did).
If you watch the actual trial, this did NOT happen. Jeff actually presented the one argument that he is not an accountant pretty intelligently and convincingly. He had cited an example of a very specific procedure that would not have been obvious to him, unless he knew all the rules of a CPA. The judges seemed convinced. The judges were even courteous to these businessmen and threw some softballs.
But had they framed it like this, he would not have come off as the bad guy in the documentary, so they had to artificially change things up a bit, which I find ethically questionable and actually makes me question what other facts they omitted/modified to fit their specific narrative. No need to pull something like that when the story sells itself. Ultimately, the testimony of the whistle blower was one of the strong testimonies that did him in.
Or not....if you don't want to be angry and ill.
If you're not pissed off, you're not paying attention. Plain and simple.
That's the whole problem. Everyone should be angry and ill. If everyone got mad enough we might be able to... yeah, nevermind. Rich people never see justice. I don't know what the solution is.
This is precisely the reason that the traditional solution to this kind of problem has always been pitchforks. The king is above the law, but the king can still bleed.
Essentially the reason the second amendment is in the bill of rights.
Came here to say the exact same thing. In my opinion, this is one of the most important documentaries made during this century. The Enron story should be known by every American that intends to vote, yet it is unlikely that it will ever be taught in a history class.
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Yup we talked about it in accounting and finance and other business courses.
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I'm convinced and I'm definitely not voting for Enron this year.
Don't blame me, I voted for Comcast.
It's taught in several classes in California at least.
It wasn't a History class, but I watched it at university in my international business class, and I've had it recommended to me in probably about 75% of my business classes.
This changed the energy system but also the financial system.
Easily one of the best documentaries I've seen. I mean, these guys were evil, but they were SO SMART, it's unreal. But what they did is just unbelievable. I live in Houston and unfortunately have met too many people who's parent's killed themselves when it all happened, because of losing everything.
That's probably where the OP got this from. That documentary was awesome to watch. It's like watching a train wreck where you don't see people burning and getting thrown from the train, but holy hell did shit blow up.
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??? $800 - $900??? no way.
yep, sounds about right.
To be honest we still havent quite recovered from this shit either.
If you dare run your AC on a hot day, Edison will hit you hard in the ass for it.
They have power save days where they will penalize you if you draw high energy devices, and reward you if you don't.
What's great is due to the increase of solar production, they claim they have no choice but to ramp rates up higher.
Californians get fucked over hardcore when it comes to electricity.
Wait wait wait wait wait.
More Californians are pumping power into the grid, and they claim to be losing money as a result?
Smells like downsizing, tastes like price gouging. Weird.
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Right, but a customer with a solar setup is potentially generating more power than they're using (that's how the bill would get down to nearly $0, and in some areas the power company winds up buying the excess back from you).
Thing about electricity, though, is that you can't just hold it in the pipe like water. They've gotta put that power someplace, and other customers aren't the only potential destination. They can sell it down the grid somewhere.
So you'd expect, in a situation where tons of customers are satisfying some or all of their own demand, that Edison would be able to reduce input expenses somewhere (and a layman's interpretation leaves the impression that it should be way more than the lingering cost of maintaining those customers' lines, at least in terms of day-to-day, I don't know how bad winter is down there).
It stands to reason that, right now, with relatively few solar panels in place, it's a net cost to the power company. But a forward-thinking company should be subsidizing more solar panels so that they can maybe close a generating station and shift the load to customers' rooves.
As it stands, customers are being penalized for a less-than-total dependence on the power company, which already had a local monopoly to begin with. I see the business rationale, but I'm not buying. Everyone on Earth is beholden to a company like this. We're entitled to demand more from them than we might from another industry. Solar panels are losing you money? Tough, you have 100% market share and no competitors.
The CPUC is a big part of the problem. By forcing a tiered pricing structure on consumption (kWh) rather than demand (kW) you have a situation that only focuses on the variable costs of energy and ignores the fixed costs of capacity. I honestly think the utilities are ahead of the regulators. They know the old business model is dying but aren't allowed to change because of regulation. Also solar interveners cry foul at what seem like reasonable proposals to get paid for providing a service.
Think about a customer that uses 0 kWh ($0 bill). The fixed costs (power plants, lines, poles etc.) are unchanged. Only the fuel cost is affected. Should a customer without solar pay more to subsidize the fixed costs of a solar customer. I don't think so
This is a result of line congestion. The lines are only capable of carrying a certain amount of current. To ensure that power is available to those that need it the most, they price it highest when peak demand is in swing. Every congested power company in America does the same thing.
The easy fix for you is to get a Tesla PowerWall, to consume more energy during off-peak hours and draw power from the battery during peak hours.
Solar does contribute to congestion, because now the power line is transmitting more energy; instead of a one-way transmission from the utility to the homes, there is also power coming from the homes back to the utility.
To fix that, get your solar array installed with a battery bank. Store your excess power generation instead of putting it back onto the grid.
There's a power company in Dallas that has periods during the day where energy is free. I was just thinking how awesome that would be if you had a PowerWall and Tesla to charge.
I can guarantee you that your energy company can't prove that solar is contributing to congestion and that they are just price gouging.
In order for solar to be causing the problem, the amount of solar fed into the street would have to be the double the amount consumed.
The maths is really simple. Let the amount of power consumed be +1. To get the same amount of power flow through the area transformer by producing solar power, you need -2 units, to bring you to a total of -1. (note the same absolute size, different direction)
It's laziness on the behalf of your legislators, which is also what led to your brownouts and price gouging last time.
"Oh, is this 105°F making you a little uncomfortable? Go ahead and turn of the AC... before I forget though, we'll be needing all of your money, including little Susie's piggy bank fund by the end of the month."
Edison
u/Sarah_Connor was trying to keep her Terminator charged.
T 800 power cells last 120 years, so not likely
You have any idea how much it costs to charge a dead battery that typically lasts 120 years?
u/Sarah_Conner just had piss poor timing.
No wonder your son chose to live off the grid
I remember when Enron was mentioned in management textbooks and scholarly journals as a bright example of successful corporate policies.
It was in my textbooks for Auditing class because of all the fraud.
Was lucky enough to have an accounting professor who worked for Arthur Andersen, who audited them. One whole class, he gave us the ability to ask whatever we wanted. We spent the full class talking about Enron. Highlight of my college career. I go to University of Houston. So, it's still a big thing here.
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And they messed up big time. What we know as the Big 4 accounting firms were the Big 5 until Andersen was implicated in everything. They are a shell of what they used to be because of colluding with Enron.
I read that as "My professor worked for Arthur Andersen, which was the company that audited Enron", not that the professor himself was involved in the auditing of Enron.
Guess we know why that guy had to get a new job.
The whistleblower of Haliburton's bill-and-hold scheme recently did an AMA. It was pretty interesting. He even wore a wire in meetings and all the transcripts are available. Really interesting read for accounting students and auditors.
Wow! That would've been one class you wouldn't want to miss.
Enron going down killed Arthur Andersen, which was one of the most respected Auditors in the world at the time.
Arthur Anderson was mentioned a couple more times because they were involved in a number of other frauds. Worldcom and Sunbeam being the ones I can remember. This is why the big five became the big four.
Were they just winging it the entire time and hoping that none of their clients were committing huge amounts of fraud? Lol.
I'm more tempted to believe they were either encouraging or gave them ideas.
ah WORLDCOM!! I forgot about them. The 90s were a great time for fraud.
I had to do a report on Enron/WorldCom for my audit class. At the end it left me thinking "Enron sucked, but Sarbanes Oxley has pretty much guaranteed job stability for a huge wave of accountants and auditors". The long term winners in Enron were the big four.
Enron were aiming to cover the full educational spectrum.
A part of me thinks that a lot of what they did is still passed around as examples in some circles. I wouldn't even be surprised if they are viewed in a positive light in the not so distant future.
I could imagine a Wolf of Wall-street type movie where the audience is lured into liking the asshole thieves and liars.
Most con-artists are very likable guys. From the documentary, the Enron guys seem pretty similar. If they weren't, they wouldn't be very good at the con.
I remember having to pay $700 to $900 a month for electricity during this time, and being hit with their fake "rolling blackouts" all the time. It seemed like total BS at the time. I also remember the California governor asking for help and being blown off by the Bush administration. And the biggest thing that I remember is that we never were given that money back. Amazing that they could just jack up prices, screw a whole state, and not have to pay it back.
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Why do people live in California again?
Gray Davis was a contender for the 2004 Presidential election. After your $700 bills, George W. Bush didn't have to worry about him anymore.
It makes you sort of don your tinfoil hats to think about it. Gray Davis was a prime 2004 candidate. George Bush is innately tied into Texan energy companies. Texan energy companies completely screw California and blame Davis.
I truly despise the GWB machine, but one can't help but marvel at how effective it was.
I lived here at the time and knew that energy de-regulation was a disaster. I even knew that "brown outs" were totally contrived and complete and utter bullshit.
People should get life in jail for these kinds of actions. Not for stealing a drink from a convenient store.
How the fuck do you get life in jail for stealing a drink from a convenience store?
3 strikes laws. Some guy in California got life for stealing pizza once.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/10/local/la-me-pizzathief10-2010feb10
Just so people can know what u/Francotanko is talking about. He didn't serve a life sentence, thankfully, and stayed out of trouble for quite some time.
Did he steal it or just download it?
You wouldnt download a pizza
OH YES I WOULD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGxr3boyIus
How dare you say such things about such talented innovators! Feckless paupers like you are the ones who should be in jail!
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Its a sad day when someone has no fecks left to give.
I ran out of it of feck ages ago, running low on gorm now.
Maybe you should ask this guy for some fecks?
r/bandnames
r/dottumblrdotcom .
Here, you can have some of these feck stamps if you leave us oligarchs alone. BTW, they are only valid at my company's general feck store.
Deregulation is a misnomer, as the market was still subject to strict state controls, including rigid price controls. These laws created an artificial arbitrage opportunity between the intertermporal wholesale power markets established by the state. Essentially, with prices unable to adjust, Enron discovered it could get paid more money to alleviate transmission congestion it had manufactured on paper, or by sending power back and forth across the region, into and outside of the price-controlled markets. In this case, Enron had an incentive to withhold as much generation capacity as possible from the price-controlled "day-ahead" market, then get paid the much higher spot price for that capacity in the "real-time" market to make up the difference in demand. This behavior is unethical, but is a wholly predictable response to price control laws.
The rules for how the California power exchange worked got kind of weird, and created odd opportunities for Enron to exploit, some of which were shady or made illegal as they were encountered. This was all made worse by a regional drought that greatly lowered hydro power generation, and a regional natural gas shortage, tightening the market and widening market gaps to be arbitraged. However, calling the market "deregulated" is simply wrong.
As someone who works for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, I agree with your assessment. Also, I now have a really nice desk and a bookshelf from Enron's Washington DC office in my apartment.
Now that is the kind of trophy-hunting I can approve of wholeheartedly. I missed out on the auctions, still kicking myself over it.
For reference, here in the UK (one of the very first countries to deregulate electricity after Chile) we had the same thing happen about 10 years earlier - the two fossil generation companies created after the breakup of the industry were found to be manipulating plant availability declarations in order to benefit from congestion payments.
In our case, the regulator cottoned on to what was going on fairly quickly and instituted additional 'market abuse' conditions that nipped this in the bud long before we got to the kind of level of market manipulation seen in California.
It's entertaining to us that California - ostensibly the home of the free market - still doesn't have a liberalised retail market because of all of this, whereas it's mandated by law in our 'socialist' EU.
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The most economically left wing state in the US still looks pretty right wing to many europeans :)
Good read, thanks
Thank you for only level headed comment in the thread. But hurrr durrr corporations
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Free market... rabble rabble... job creators... bootstraps...
HOW CAN THEY CREATE JOBS WHEN DEY TOOK ER JERBS?!
HEY HEY HEY! IT'S NOT MY FAULT PEOPLE IN INDIA, PAKISTAN, CHINA, AND DETROIT WILL WORK FOR RICE AND BEATINGS, WAGES MUST BE COMPETETIVE.
"Maybe you should stop trying to get more than what you're worth!"
Beatings will continue until morale improves!
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I see people make this claim about Glass-Steagall all the time and yet nobody has been able to actually explain its mechanics and how it could have prevented the crash.
The regulations preventing association of commercial and investment banks would have prevented the mortgage packaging that created the 2007/2008 crash.
It played a non-trivial role in a perfect storm of other factors:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/nov/30/what-caused-crisis-no-one-thing/
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/10/who-caused-the-economic-crisis/
Where i use to live, in a small town in southern ontario, the power would literally just go out for no apparent reason on the nicest of summers days. Sometimes for 5 minutes, sometimes for 5 hours. It was ridiculous. I always thought there was some kind of conspiracy going on, maybe i was right...
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Definitely what the logo was inspired by.
Heh, the director himself said they took the Enron logo to make the evil corp logo!
Was hoping someone would make a Mr. Robot reference.
No surprise here. Enron was basically chaotic evil in corporate form. It is literally the poster child for how to be a deceitful asshole of a business.
I remember one of the tapes "Burn baby burn, that's a beautiful thing" in regards of california burning. They also described us as millions of rich grandmas.
The classic texan hate and disdain for california was really showing in those tapes.
Haggen , a grocer that just bought up a few hundred stores down here thought they could pull the "soak californians for all they're worth" tactic, and thought that we're loaded with cash. They just found out the hard way that you cant stock your shelves with shasta soda and charge fucking $3 a bottle for it and claim that you sell organic food like Sprouts does and charge more than everyone in the area does.
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I'm super happy because the Haggen in my area also marked prices up and they're already closing up shop somehow
My Albertson's just turned into a Haggens.....my blueberries went from 2.99 a pt to 4.99 a pt. ...thought maybe the season was over but my .99 rice a roni turned into 2.49 roni.....the horrors....
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Went to school in LA 2000-2004. Studied for finals by gas fireplace light in dorms. My school had signed an agreement to be first on blackout lists long before for lower power prices since LA is an American city and doesn't have regular power shortages... Until Enron anyway.
Had to hitch a ride to do laundry off campus.
For those who have seen the Smartest Guys doc, my hometown of Portland, OR had tons of decade long utility workers retirement crushed when the company folded. To be fair they probably should have had more prudent financial strategies, namely diversity, but there hadn't been an Enron until Enron. They alone prompted legislative investigations of Ken Lay(close Bush friend) which lead to the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley Act related to disclosure and personal liability of execs for accurate reporting of public companies.
They changed a lot but laws are always reactive, and the next Enron will be another company of smart and /or connected people who will fleece the public and more late legislation will be passed. Today's companies that trade at hyperspeeds with an advantage over everyone in the market is a good place to start...
Why did you have fireplaces in your dorms?!?
Didn't one of the execs get away clean with over 300 million and married a stripper?
Lou Pai, the head of Enron Energy Services.
That's weird, usually when I hear the name 'Enron' my first thoughts are of a fine upstanding company with integrity.
Don't you have suits to make?
Well today you learned buddy... Today you learned.
This was the tip of the iceberg. It was the rise in price which prompted the recall of Governor Gray Davis because the state was obligated by contract. The recall was funded by Rep. Darrell Issa, who hoped to run as a replacement candidate for governor. Issa donated $2 million towards the effort. Davis was recalled but it was Arnold Schwarzenegger who replaced him.
The same Daryl Issa, it should be noted, who has spent the last 5 years doing his damnedest to dig up (or make up) dirt on the Obama administration as the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee.
Issa cried on the stand in front of the press when he conceded to Arnold. I'm not one to kick a man when he's down but: Darrell Issa.
Darrell Issa is a political snake. Truly one of the worst people in Washington. And that's not just a red v blue thing either. His entire career is filthy.
I'll just leave this here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Issa#Business_career
I came here to write this. I was in CA when there was a huge furor over the recall and everyone and their mother hated Gray Davis. The guy, as governor of CA, owned, I think an apartment and had a net worth of <$500K as I recall. And he was bound by contract to do all the stuff he was maligned for. I saw it happening and I was like, "can't you all see that this has nothing to do with him?" I felt bad for him.
They tried to recall Walker who forcibly had a hand in busting up labor unions, and failed. Democratic CA succeeded in recalling a Democratic governor who merely got screwed by, what would become, the largest bankruptcy in the country's history (up to that point). And elected Arnold. It was an extremely sad turn of events IMHO.
It was like being rescued from a burning building and charged with arson and the guy who set the fire getting the insurance money. Well...close to that.
That's only a small part. This all came about when 1996 California deregulation allowed private manipulation of a complicated, essential market.
Shutting down a power plant was the least of it. They had an arsenal of games- exporting power out of one half of the state to a neighboring state (which entitled them to a high rate) only to IMPORT power back into the other half (which again entitled them to a high rate).
They caused congestion in order to charge legally allowed "congestion fees".
The thing was, the end-consumer utility companies were capped in how much they could charge. Consequently, as Enron's rate manipulation skyrocketed the costs, they were going bankrupt.
Enron was the largest trading company in the world in 2000 (larger than Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, or Exxon/BP/Shell). Absolutely insane considering they didn't even have trading operations <5 years before!!
http://on.cc.com/OCXcqY
If the link doesnt work look up Daily Show Grandma Millie
Haha, came here for this. Legendary clip about those greedy mother-arbitrageurs. Stephen Colbert obviously is the Enron guy there.
That year I was working network surveillance for the company that was the predecessor to Comcast (no love for them, the first thing they did was lay most of us off). My job was to keep track of city wide WAN architecture - HFC, SONET, microwave ... all the "large pipe" connections that connect entire cities to the rest of the world. We had so many blackouts all across the US that summer that some of our elder engineers basically thought it was the end times. Huge parts of the bay area were losing power daily. It was like monitoring the power grid in some developing country, never ending rolling blackouts all over the place. And it wasn't just CA, it was markets across the nation.
Weird getting to see the greed of a few men adversely affect an entire country, first hand. If the same thing happened now, in the day of Netflix and streaming porn, I'd imagine there would be riots in the streets.
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It's funny how people think this sort of corruption doesn't go on regularly today. Like Enron was some kind of corporate anomaly.
Edit: For the few people insulting me because they disagree and demanding I reply, that's not how discussions work. If you'd posted your own views in a reasonable manner I'd have been happy to respond in kind, but I have better things to do than engage people who think the height of debate is ad hominem.
Maybe it's just the people I associate with, but everyone I know thinks it goes on all the time.
Yeah, that was a puzzling statement
Yeah but why is it the norm? Cuz everyone knows and no one does anything about it. Money runs everything because we let it.
Sure, what's step one? You lead, I'll follow.
Step one has to be getting a system of accountability in place. Like a website. So people can see how their own representatives are not actually representing them. And where ALL the money is coming from so when representatives vote on laws that only benefits their donors/lobbyists we can easily see that.Then, once people see what a crock the system is, we vote. Vote every time. This will start to expose the voter fraud that is keeping the oppressive system in place. Combat the misinformation, combat the voter fraud, vote to change policies that allow lobbyists to buy laws, and hell, we may have a shot. But it starts with clear information on the money trail and representative's voting records.
I would love to see a website like that.
I think campaign finance reform could cut to the heart of the problem faster.
There's corruption, but not like that. They were literally charging $1000 per kilowatt (edit: megawatt) hour when the high price was normally about $50. Most of the time Enron would leave the state of California with the bill (resulting in the California budget crises that they still haven't recovered from), but sometimes that bill would actually hit the end user. People were getting electic bills in the thousands for normal residential usage. They burned the bills publicly.
Most of the time corruption happens behind the scenes. This was blatant.
$1000/kwh sounds ludicrous when I pay 11¢/kwh. Seriously. How the fuck did anyone think this was a good long term idea?
Sorry, I meant megawatt hour. Still a crazy price.
I agree that corruption like this occurs daily. But Enron was a bit of an anomaly as they placed themselves to be able to use a dodgy accounting practise that listed future potential gains as their earning. Later on their financial wing was singular due to the fact they did not have a proper balance sheet like all other financial companies had to produce. The architects and founder did get long sentences in prison. The founder Kenneth Lay died shortly after sentencing.
Hey at least they got to see the Milky Way for the first time!
They shut down traffic lights and hospitals, almost surely killing patients. This was something that went on for years and cost california billions of dollars and made arnold schwarzanegger governor of one of the most important states in the US.
Traffic lights yes.
Hospitals no, when they designed the rolling blackout system, they were in exempt blocks for the most part. Other Government buildings as well. I can assure you the State Capitol probably never had one, though the offices around them probably did.
People who lived right next door to one were not subjected to them as well, if the grid design allowed.
The rolling blackout blocks were purposely designed to prevent this.
And seriously, any major medical center without backup power provisions is a serious problem in the first place. The major ones have generators.
Source: Dad worked for PG&E, and a friend of mine lived right next door to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. Never had a rolling blackout, but I had 3 living off of Arden Way and Business 80. They tested the rolling blackout system where he lived in rural Shasta County as well as a few others before implementing it across the state a few years before this happened. Was all a part of the deregulation. They forced PG&E to sell a lot of power plants to other operators as a result of it too.
Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
I got free ice cream out of it. Ben & Jerry's on Haight St.
And this is why you don't privatize utilities.
Honestly these big companies have so much money on the line and are able to line so many pockets I wonder what the percentage of actual corporate corruption that's been found out about really is
When Jeb Bush was Florida's governor, he sagely sank tons of taxpayer money into Enron. The Florida pension fund lost $335 million.
Bush and the pensions weren't the only entities that got fucked when Enron fell. Everyone investing in them did. Its fall was a surprise.
I'm sure it was a surprise, considering his brother knew exactly what was going on:
Had the evidence been released in 2001 when Davis accused energy companies of fraud it would have helped California s case and voters may have viewed the governor more positively. But if FERC were to publicly release the details of the Williams settlement it wouldn't have jibed with Bush's energy policy, which was made public instead in May 2001. It's highly unlikely that Bush, Cheney and members of the energy task force were kept in the dark about the Williams scam, especially since the findings of the investigation by FERC took place around the same time the policy was being drafted.
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Jeb Bush did not invest the Florida Pension Fund, I guarantee it. He may have hired professional money managers who did what you allege.
Fun fact: a few ppl went to jail for Enron fiasco. Though Wall Street walked unscathed after causing '08 recession
It pains me that this isn't common knowledge.
The fuckers even called this "Operation Death Star." It was one of the most widely ignored stories of the 2000s, because it reflected poorly on Bush and the deregulation agenda.
Enron is the single most reported accounting case study across the globe. This was one of the top-5 biggest stories of the 2000's...
A few weeks ago there were reports that gas was headed for <$2/gal and two weeks later there was suddenly a "refinery issue" in Indiana that would mean increased gas prices for the Midwest.
"Refinery issue", my ass.
Valero's Texas city refinery had a fire this past week after getting hit by lightning.
Pretty hard to order up a shut down like that.
Bullshit. They're an evil group of people. They know how to get what they want. It definitely wouldn't be hard for them to pay off the right people.
"Lightning Strike" my ass. /s
The Republicans phoned their good friend JC to hook it up. #PowerOfPrayer
Refinery maintenance happens as much during high prices as it does during low prices. Ignoring maintenance issues makes things like this happen. Not too good in times like this when downstream is carrying upstream on its back.
Thanks Republicans!
Fucking scum.
"What is the difference between California and the Titanic? At least when the Titanic went down, the lights were on." - Jeffery Skilling (then CEO of Enron)
And when California asked for a federal investigation, G.W. gave California the big middle finger wave.
They also helped pay for Arnold Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial campaign. When he got elected, he refused to prosecute Jeff Skilling or Kenneth Lay. He then proceeded to run our economy into the ground.
"Don't be economic girly-men!"- Arnie at the 2004 Republican National Convention
Is that something Governors have power over?
And surely the Enron guys broke about a gazillion federal laws during their time at Enron.
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His successor hasn't had any trouble managing California's budget. Currently running a surplus, increasing education spending and putting some aside for a rainy day fund. One of those tax and spend Democrats running things now.
"Rainy day fund" lol. Maybe "not so rainy day fund" might be more fitting
too soon. :(
Rainy day fund might be apt this winter. "'Godzilla' El Niño: Unbelievable rain for California, dry winter for Midwest"
Can he come to Illinois now? Please?
Moonbeam fo life!
To be fair, I always considered Arnold to be fairly liberal in a lot of his policies. I'm not sure OP is attacking him personally or just the R by his name, but, as a moderate fan of some of the things he tried to accomplish, I can see an argument being made for the former.
Indeed. And Gray Davis was blamed, and was wrongly recalled. He hadn't committed a crime.
But. But Reddit loves Arnie!!! I'm confused.
Don't forget that he prevented marriage equality in California.
any comment u/govschwarzenegger
This is the sort of BS that makes me angry when folks argue that industry doesn't need to be regulated.
I love it when market self-regulates
Enron, a Libertarian's dream.
But pure capitalism without regulations is the best system ever. Human nature and greed could never pervert such a saintly system. /sarcasm
I thought the case files for this company's fraud were completely lost (along with thousands of others) in the collapse of World Trade Center 7 on September 11th 2001. Interesting how such flagrant and corrupt corporations seem to have the best luck when it comes to not taking responsibility for their crimes.
I guess you never saw "The Smartest Guys in the Room", huh? This is pretty well trodden ground.
Which led to the trumped-up recall of Calif. Gov. Gray Davis, which opened the door for Arnold Schwarzenegger to take the position.
THANKS OBAMA.
TIL: redditors are 14 years behind common knowledge
Redditors are actually 14 year olds.
did no one watch the film?
jesus
Gangsta
When you're learning digital forensics or eDiscovery, the Enron computer images are all used to show you how to hunt for information in plain sight etc. since it's all a matter of public record now.