Enron

In de fascinerende documentaire 'Enron. The Smartest Guys In The Room' zegt de 34-jarige journalist Bethany McLean van Fortune Magazine, die als eerste doorkreeg dat er iets fundamenteels niet klopte met Enron, over de topmanagement: 'I think there was a huge amount of delusion at Enron... I think Jeff Skilling had a desperate need to believe that Enron was a succes. I think he identified with Enron. He proclaimed at one point: "I am Enron" and he had to believe that the company was succesful because to do otherwise would have meant that he himself was a failure and he just could not do that... It is part of the tragedy of the Enron story that most of the key figures were not people who were born with great riches or easy opportunities. They were people like Ken Lay, who was the son of a dirt poor baptist minister who even hadn't indoor plumbing untill he was 11 years old or Jeff Skilling who worked some 50 hours a week all the way through highschool years. His family was blue collar. Rebecca Mark, who grew up on a farm in Missouri and put herself through college. And these are people who really created themselves just by sheer force of will, who made something out of nothing. And to see their fatal flaws, which they all had, bring them down, there is something especially tragic about that.' De waanvoorstelling van de daders gaat zover dat ze zich naderhand als slachtoffer zien. De documentaire maakt ook duidelijk dat tot aan het bittere einde de aanhang, de werknemers van Enron in de handel en wandel van de top bleef geloven. Enron laat tenslotte zien dat mensen zonder identiteit ineens een identiteit verzinnen, ze nemen een rol aan en die kunnen ze tot het fatale einde blijven spelen, daarbij hun naasten in hun val meeslepend. Wat mij opviel was hoe buitengewoon scherp de observatie was van de betrekkelijk jonge McLean. Ook in Nederland leven politici en topmanagers die met leugen en bedrog iets van niets hebben gemaakt, iets van zichzelf hebben gecreerd dat niet op de werkelijkheid berust, en vervolgens de mist ingaan. We moeten ons afvragen waar en wanneer wat fout ging, maar misschien kunnen alleen grote volkeren dat, die een echte intellectuele cultuur hebben, zoals in de Verenigde Staten. Niet alles is daar McDonald's.

Alex Gibney, de schrijver/producer van 'Enron. The Smartest Guys In The Room,' verklaarde desgevraagd: 'I think the story of Enron exposes the major flaw in capitalism, which is the crude believe that raw self interest left untatered will always result in the best possible social good. It's not so.'

Bethany McLean concludeerde tenslotte: 'It was such a surprise to me that 99 percent of the people who worked at Enron, even the people who were in a position to see it, didn't see it, because they didn't want to add it up and I think that tells such a large story of human nature and of the process by which we rationalise and deceive ourselves when doing this is in our best interest.'