The Smartest Guys in the Room

The Smartest Guys in the Room
Author: Bethany McLean,Peter Elkind
Publsiher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780241968673

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What went wrong with American business at the end of the 20th century? Until the spring of 2001, Enron epitomized the triumph of the New Economy. Feared by rivals, worshipped by investors, Enron seemingly could do no wrong. Its profits rose every year; its stock price surged ever upward; its leaders were hailed as visionaries. Then a young Fortune writer, Bethany McLean, wrote an article posing a simple question - how, exactly, does Enron make its money? Within a year Enron was facing humiliation and bankruptcy, the largest in US history, which caused Americans to lose faith in a system that rewarded top insiders with millions of dollars, while small investors lost everything. It was revealed that Enron was a company whose business was an illusion, an illusion that Wall Street was willing to accept even though they knew what the real truth was. This book - fully updated for the paperback - tells the extraordinary story of Enron's fall.

The Death Shift

The Death Shift
Author: Peter Elkind
Publsiher: Diversion Books
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 9781682301586

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The true story of a killer nurse whose crimes were hidden by a hospital for years. It’s 1980, and Genene Jones is working the 3 to 11 PM shift in the pediatric ICU in San Antonio's county hospital. As the weeks go by, infants under her care begin experiencing unexpected complications—and dying—in alarming numbers, prompting rumors that there is a murderer among the staff. Her eight-hour shift would come to be called “the death shift.” This strange epidemic would continue unabated for more than a year, before Jones is quietly sent off—with a good recommendation—to a rural pediatric clinic. There, eight children under her care mysteriously stopped breathing—and a 15-month-old baby girl died. In May 1984, Jones was finally arrested, leading to a trial that revealed not only her deeply disturbed mind and a willingness to kill, but a desire to play “God” with the lives of the children under her care. More shocking still was that the hospital had shredded records and remained silent about Jones’ horrific deeds, obscuring the full extent of her spree and prompting grieving parents to ask: Why? Elkind chronicles Jones’ rampage, her trials, and the chilling aftermath of one of the most horrific crimes in America, and turns his piercing gaze onto those responsible for its cover-up. It is a tale with special relevance today, as prosecutors, distraught parents, and victims’ advocates struggle to keep Jones behind bars. “A horrifying true-life medical thriller...”—Publishers Weekly “Gripping...A remarkable journalistic achievement!”—Newsweek “Murder, madness, and medicine...superb!”—Library Journal “Shocking...true crime reporting at its most compelling.”—Booklist

Conspiracy of Fools

Conspiracy of Fools
Author: Kurt Eichenwald
Publsiher: Crown
Total Pages: 1258
Release: 2005-03-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780767911801

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From an award-winning New York Times reporter comes the full, mind-boggling true story of the lies, crimes, and ineptitude behind the Enron scandal that imperiled a presidency, destroyed a marketplace, and changed Washington and Wall Street forever. It was the corporate collapse that appeared to come out of nowhere. In late 2001, the Enron Corporation—a darling of the financial world, a company whose executives were friends of presidents and the powerful—imploded virtually overnight, leaving vast wreckage in its wake and sparking a criminal investigation that would last for years. Kurt Eichenwald transforms the unbelievable story of the Enron scandal into a rip-roaring narrative of epic proportions, taking readers behind every closed door—from the Oval Office to the executive suites, from the highest reaches of the Justice Department to the homes and bedrooms of the top officers. It is a tale of global reach—from Houston to Washington, from Bombay to London, from Munich to Sao Paolo—laying out the unbelievable scenes that twisted together to create this shocking true story. Eichenwald reveals never-disclosed details of a story that features a cast including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul O’Neill, Harvey Pitt, Colin Powell, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Alan Greenspan, Ken Lay, Andy Fastow, Jeff Skilling, Bill Clinton, Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone. With its you-are-there glimpse into the secretive worlds of corporate power, Conspiracy of Fools is an all-true financial and political thriller of cinematic proportions.

All the Devils Are Here

All the Devils Are Here
Author: Bethany McLean,Joe Nocera
Publsiher: Penguin
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2011-08-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781101551059

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"Hell is empty, and all the devils are here." -Shakespeare, The Tempest As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger-pointing began. Should the blame fall on Wall Street, Main Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue? On greedy traders, misguided regulators, sleazy subprime companies, cowardly legislators, or clueless home buyers? According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America's most acclaimed business journalists, the real answer is all of the above-and more. Many devils helped bring hell to the economy. And the full story, in all of its complexity and detail, is like the legend of the blind men and the elephant. Almost everyone has missed the big picture. Almost no one has put all the pieces together. All the Devils Are Here goes back several decades to weave the hidden history of the financial crisis in a way no previous book has done. It explores the motivations of everyone from famous CEOs, cabinet secretaries, and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers, analysts, and Wall Street traders. It delves into the powerful American mythology of homeownership. And it proves that the crisis ultimately wasn't about finance at all; it was about human nature. Among the devils you'll meet in vivid detail: • Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide, who dreamed of spreading homeownership to the masses, only to succumb to the peer pressure-and the outsized profits-of the sleaziest subprime lending. • Roland Arnall, a respected philanthropist and diplomat, who made his fortune building Ameriquest, a subprime lending empire that relied on blatantly deceptive lending practices. • Hank Greenberg, who built AIG into a Rube Goldberg contraption with an undeserved triple-A rating, and who ran it so tightly that he was the only one who knew where all the bodies were buried. • Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, aloof and suspicious, who suffered from "Goldman envy" and drove a proud old firm into the ground by promoting cronies and pushing out his smartest lieutenants. • Lloyd Blankfein, who helped turn Goldman Sachs from a culture that famously put clients first to one that made clients secondary to its own bottom line. • Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae, who (like his predecessors) bullied regulators into submission and let his firm drift away from its original, noble mission. • Brian Clarkson of Moody's, who aggressively pushed to increase his rating agency's market share and stock price, at the cost of its integrity. • Alan Greenspan, the legendary maestro of the Federal Reserve, who ignored the evidence of a growing housing bubble and turned a blind eye to the lending practices that ultimately brought down Wall Street-and inflicted enormous pain on the country. Just as McLean's The Smartest Guys in the Room was hailed as the best Enron book on a crowded shelf, so will All the Devils Are Here be remembered for finally making sense of the meltdown and its consequences.

Power Failure

Power Failure
Author: Mimi Swartz,Sherron Watkins
Publsiher: Currency
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2004-03-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780767913683

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“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.

The Smartest Person in the Room

The Smartest Person in the Room
Author: Christian Espinosa
Publsiher: Unknown
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2021-01-15
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1544516223

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Cyberattack-an ominous word that strikes fear in the hearts of nearly everyone, especially business owners, CEOs, and executives. With cyberattacks resulting in often devastating results, it's no wonder executives hire the best and brightest of the IT world for protection. But are you doing enough? Do you understand your risks? What if the brightest aren't always the best choice for your company?  In The Smartest Person in the Room, Christian Espinosa shows you how to leverage your company's smartest minds to your benefit and theirs. Learn from Christian's own journey from cybersecurity engineer to company CEO. He describes why a high IQ is a lost superpower when effective communication, true intelligence, and self-confidence are not embraced. With his seven-step methodology and stories from the field, Christian helps you develop your team's technical minds so they become better humans and strong leaders who excel in every role. This book provides you with an enlightening perspective of how to turn your biggest unknown weakness into your strongest defense.

Enron

Enron
Author: Loren Fox
Publsiher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2004-01-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780471432203

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"I'd say you were a carnival barker, except that wouldn't be fairtocarnival barkers. A carnie will at least tell you up front thathe's running a shell game. You, Mr. Lay, were running whatpurported to be the seventh largest corporation inAmerica."-Senator Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL) to Enron CEO Kenneth Lay,Senate Commerce Science & Transportation's Subcommittee,Hearing on Enron, 2/12/02 The speed of Enron's rise and fall is truly astonishing and perhapsthe single most important story of corporate failure in thetwenty-first century. In Enron investigative journalist Loren Foxpromises readers nothing short of the most compelling andinsightful investigation into Enron's meteoric ascent-regarded byWall Street and the media as the epitome of innovation-and itsspectacular fall from grace. In a lively and authoritative manner,Fox discusses how the biggest corporate bankruptcy in Americanbusiness history happened, why for so long no one (except for anenlightened few) saw it coming, and what its impact will be onfinancial markets, the U.S. economy, U.S. energy policy, and thepublic for years to come. With access to many company insiders,Fox's intriguing account of this corporate debacle also provides anoverview of the corporate culture and business model that led toEnron's high-flying success and disastrous failure. The story ofEnron is one that will reverberate in global financial and energymarkets as well as in criminal and civil courts for years to come.Rife with all the elements of a classic thriller-scandal, dishonestaccounting, personal greed, questionable campaign contributions,suicide-Enron captures the essence of a company that went too fartoo fast.

IQ

IQ
Author: Joe Ide
Publsiher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2017-04-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781474607193

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'Joe Ide is the best new discovery I've come across in a long time. And Isaiah Quintabe is the kind of sleuth not seen on the mystery landscape before.' Michael Connelly SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA JOHN CREASEY (new blood) DAGGER THE TIMES CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH: 'Full of humour, originality and high-quality writing' East Long Beach. The LAPD is barely keeping up with the high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, the elderly are being mugged, children go missing. But word has spread: if you've got a case the police can't - or won't - touch, Isaiah Quintabe will help you out. They call him IQ. He's a loner and a high school dropout, his unassuming nature disguising a relentless determination and a fierce intelligence. His clients pay him whatever they can afford, a new set of tyres or some homemade muffins. But now he needs a client who can pay. And the only way to that client is through a jive-talking, low-life drug dealer he thought he'd left behind. Then there's the case itself. A drug-addled rap star surrounded by a crew of flunkies who believes his life is in danger; and a hit man who even other hit men say is a lunatic. If he solves this case, IQ can put right a mistake he made long ago. If not it won't just be the hit man coming after him ... WINNER of the ANTHONY AWARD for Best Debut, the SHAMUS AWARD for BEST FIRST P.I. NOVEL. the MACAVITY AWARD for Best First Novel; SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 EDGAR AWARD and STRAND CRITICS AWARD.