Movie Reflection (The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron)
Arabella V. Antepuesto
The movie begins with bringing the main character to screen, Brian Cruver as a child being taught
of how America is full of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those lines came from a friend
of his father, Mr. Blue. Brian was once like all of us in the college of business and accounting. He
was a student and a dreamer. Like any of us would, he was ecstatic to be recruited to America’s
seventh largest company in 2001 and years prior with the help of Mr. Blue. The Enron company
was mainly an energy company. It began trading in energy derivatives market and later on started
new services such as broadband and services for business customers. In the movie, it mentioned
that Enron had over 240 billion revenues for the current year. Though the company reached great
achievements, Enron now is known for the massive case of corporate corruption. The entire
scandal was based on massive accounting and corporate fraud. Many customer contracts were
distorted by Enron. Mentioned in the film, 80% of the business were virtual assets. The company
was able to record transactions improperly, not only against GAAP but also against agreed-upon
contracts, by working with outside parties like its auditing firm. Executives at Enron inflated the
company's earnings and concealed its debts by engaging in dishonest accounting techniques. To
my research, Enron used mark-to-market accounting technique. They were able to manipulate
through the complex contracts and it was easy for Enron to artificially inflate the value of the
contract. That was how they showed promising records on some of their financial statements and
somehow continued to gain customers. One of the highlights that stuck to me in the movie was the
introduction of so called “bankruptcy protection” or should I say the coffee-cup scene. The head
or executive of their department explains to them how the new service will work. It somehow
shows us the summed up risk-taking system of Enron. The company also showed unrealistic
promises in the derivatives market as shown in the movie. Films like ‘The Crooked E’ is an eye
opener for so many people involved in the business and accounting world. It shows the behindthe-scenes or the back office of how these people provide the services they offer. It gives us an
insight of the power that these companies hold when you lay your money on them. Customers are
never at fault for trusting. It is the provider that is unethical to their service/work. On April 12,
2001, the company reports stock price of 58.35 dollars. As days go by, its stock price increased
and decreased a few digits. It consistently continued this back and forth until the first week of May.
Enron’s stock price started decreasing drastically to lower than 58 dollars. It continued decreasing
down to centavos by the end of the year. The event was reported as one of the biggest bankruptcies
in United States. The people should take it as an example that there will be consequences of
unethical behaviors. The movie shows us how important leadership and corporate governance is.
Several executives of Enron were to be blamed of its downfall. They were reports of the ongoing
unethical activities prior bankruptcy but there were executives that ignored it. As students pushing
ourselves to become part of this agency or the business world, we should take notes of these lessons
from the past. We should always follow ethics with our services unlike Enron that claims “Honesty
and fairness” but did the complete opposite anyways. We should remember this lesson because in
a company or corporate, many people will be involved. Around 10,000 people lost their jobs, many
more lost their retirement and life savings so Enron could have crazy parties, drive luxurious cars
and eat expensive sushi.