 | |
| Author | Robert Bryce |
|---|---|
| Country | America |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Energy |
| Publisher | PublicAffairs |
Publication date | 8 October 2002 |
| Pages | 416 |
| ISBN | 978-1-58648-138-4 |
Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron is a book by Robert Bryce and published in 2002 by PublicAffairs with an introduction by Molly Ivins.
In Pipe Dreams, Byrce writes of the rise and fall of Enron, including its ties to the presidential administrations of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He also writes of the culture of excessive greed and sexual misconduct within the company's leadership.
Fran Kelly on her radio national breakfast show for ABC said, "'Greed and sleaze' that best sums-up America's largest corporate collapse. Enron was a breeding ground for some of the worst excesses the business world has seen. It wasn't uncommon for the company's directors to send corporate jets to pick up homesick daughters in Paris, or fly themselves to major sporting events. One Enron division even spent $4 million a year on flowers, alone. But the company's executives weren't only guilty of cheating on their shareholders. Many married staff were permanent fixtures in Houston's countless strip clubs. All this and more is documented in a new book Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron by Austin-based investigative reporter Robert Bryce." [1]
Andrew Leonard writing for Salon has said, "Bryce recapitulates how the press, the analysts, Enron's board of directors and its shareholders all bought into Enron's vision of itself. There were obvious reasons, as he points out, for the widespread collusion. The analysts worked for companies that also wanted Enron's investment banking business. The directors had companies of their own that were doing deals with Enron. The shareholders loved to see the stock price go up and up, and the business press, well, the business press loves a winner!" [2]
William J. Holstein writing for The New York Times has said, "Mr. Bryce, a writer who lives in Austin, Tex., delves deeply into the long relationship among President Bush, his father, and Kenneth L. Lay, the former chairman and chief executive of Enron, whom the younger Mr. Bush nicknamed, Kenny Boy." [3]
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 as a merger between Lay's Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies. Before its bankruptcy on December 3, 2001, Enron employed approximately 29,000 staff and was a major electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper company, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion during 2000. Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years.
Andrew Stuart "Andy" Fastow is a convicted felon and former financier who was the chief financial officer of Enron Corporation, an energy trading company based in Houston, Texas, until he was fired shortly before the company declared bankruptcy. Fastow was one of the key figures behind the complex web of off-balance-sheet special purpose entities used to conceal Enron's massive losses in their quarterly balance sheets. By unlawfully maintaining personal stakes in these ostensibly independent ghost-entities, he was able to defraud Enron out of tens of millions of dollars. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into his and the company's conduct in 2001. Fastow was sentenced to a six-year prison sentence and ultimately served five years for convictions related to these acts. His wife, Lea Weingarten, also worked at Enron, where she was an assistant treasurer; she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering conspiracy and filing fraudulent income tax returns, and served jail time before early release to a halfway house.
Vinson & Elkins LLP is an international law firm with approximately 700 lawyers worldwide headquartered in the First City Tower in Downtown Houston, Texas.
Dynegy Inc. was an electric company based in Houston, Texas, in the United States. It owned and operated a number of power stations in the U.S., all of which were natural gas-fueled or coal-fueled, until merging with Vistra Energy on April 9, 2018. The company is located at 601 Travis Street in Downtown Houston. The company was founded in 1984 as Natural Gas Clearinghouse. It was originally an energy brokerage, buying and selling natural gas supplies. It changed its name to NGC Corporation in 1995 after entering the electrical power generation business.
Wendy Lee Gramm is an American economist and former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for the Reagan administration. She is also the wife of former United States Senator Phil Gramm. Gramm has gained notoriety for her role in the Enron scandal.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a 2005 American documentary film based on the best-selling 2003 book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, a study of one of the largest business scandals in American history. McLean and Elkind are credited as writers of the film alongside the director, Alex Gibney.
Robert Bryce is an American author and journalist in Austin, Texas. His articles on energy, politics, and other topics have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times,Washington Post,Wall Street Journal,Forbes, Real Clear Energy,Counterpunch, and National Review.
Lou Lung Pai is a Chinese-American businessman and former Enron executive. He was CEO of Enron Energy Services from March 1997 until January 2001 and CEO of Enron Xcelerator, a venture capital division of Enron, from February 2001 until June 2001. He left Enron with over $250 million. Pai was the second-largest land owner in Colorado after he purchased the 77,500-acre (314 km2) Taylor Ranch for $23 million in 1999, though he sold the property in June 2004 for $60 million.
Kenneth Lee Lay was the founder, CEO and chairman of Enron who was heavily involved in the eponymous accounting scandal that unraveled in 2001 into the largest bankruptcy ever to that date. Lay was indicted by a grand jury and was found guilty of 10 counts of securities fraud at trial. Lay died in July 2006 while vacationing in his house near Aspen, Colorado, three months before his scheduled sentencing. A preliminary autopsy reported Lay died of a myocardial infarction caused by coronary artery disease; his death resulted in a vacated judgment.
Rebecca P. Mark-Jusbasche, known during her international business career as Rebecca Mark, is best known as the former head of Enron International, a subsidiary of Enron. She was also CEO of Azurix Corp., a publicly traded water services company originally developed by Enron International. Mark was promoted to Vice Chairman of Enron in 1998 and was a member of its board of directors. She resigned from Enron in August 2000.
Julie Moos is a Canadian photographer and art writer.
Daniel "Dan" Scotto is an American financial analyst. In August 2001, as an analyst with BNP Paribas, Scotto downgraded Enron securities from "Buy" to "Neutral". He took this action four months before the Enron accounting scandal was revealed that led to the company's bankruptcy. Scotto claims that he was fired due to this decision, a claim that is disputed by BNP Paribas. According to the March 2002 Publication of Infrastructure and Financial Markets Review, the Enron report “All Stressed-up… And No Place To Go” issued by Dan Scotto was characterized by BNP Paribas as “we don’t think it was a good recommendation or a reasonable one.” At the time Enron’s stock was trading in a range of $35 to $40 per share which “…provided investors with a good opportunity to cut their losses.” Over coming months the stock declined. By the end of September it had dipped below $30 a share; on 22 October, as the scale of Enron's accounting practices became apparent, the price fell to $20.65, and within three weeks it had dropped below $10. The shares were delisted from the New York Stock Exchange on 15 January 2002, having traded below $1 for thirty consecutive days.
The Enron scandal was an accounting scandal involving Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas. Upon being publicized in October 2001, the company declared bankruptcy and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen – then one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world – was effectively dissolved. In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in U.S. history at that time, Enron was cited as the biggest audit failure.
Pipe dream may refer to:
Accounting scandals are business scandals which arise from intentional manipulation of financial statements with the disclosure of financial misdeeds by trusted executives of corporations or governments. Such misdeeds typically involve complex methods for misusing or misdirecting funds, overstating revenues, understating expenses, overstating the value of corporate assets, or underreporting the existence of liabilities. It involves an employee, account, or corporation itself and is misleading to investors and shareholders.
Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future is a book by Robert Bryce about energy, mainly from a United States perspective. It was published in 2010 by PublicAffairs. A short essay based on the book was released as an op-ed by the author in The Washington Post.
Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence is a book by Robert Bryce which was released in 2008 and is published by PublicAffairs.
Bush Family Fortunes: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is a 2004 documentary film directed by Steven Grandison and Greg Palast. The film, which examines various aspects of the Presidency of George W. Bush, including the 2000 US Presidential election and the Iraq War, is adapted from the 2003 BBC production Bush Family Fortunes and based on the 2002 book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by investigative journalist Palast, who had spent years tracking the Bush family for the BBC and The Guardian newspaper. The research for the original BBC film, which claims to have exposed the George W. Bush military service controversy, was also drawn upon by Michael Moore for Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and footage was used by Robert Greenwald in Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election (2002).
"Tone at the top" is a term that originated in the field of accounting and is used to describe an organization's general ethical climate, as established by its board of directors, audit committee, and senior management. Having good tone at the top is believed by business ethics experts to help prevent fraud and other unethical practices. The very same idea is expressed in negative terms by the old saying "A fish rots from the head down".
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