Book Review -- Conspiracy of Fools

I'd been waiting for Kurt Eichenwald's book on Enron, Conspiracy of Fools, to come out in paperback, and it just did. Weighing in around 650 pages plus 80 of notes and appendices, you might want to practice your clean-and-jerk before picking it up. It's well worth it, though, if you're interested in what really went on at Enron. It started as an interesting idea -- a pipeline company forming a marketplace for buyers and sellers of energy to replace the traditional "buy from producer, mark it up, pipe it to utilities, mark it up, deliver electricity to consumers" cycle. That transformed Enron from a pipeline company into a financial marketplace. Add a dollop of arrogance, a heap of incompetence, a healthy dose of criminality and greed, mix together with a side of conflict-of-interest, and then ask your combination accounting and consulting company to keep things on track, and you're well on your way to the biggest bankruptcy in America. Ken Lay comes out as the chief fool in this book rather than the criminal mastermind. We'll see soon enough how that defense works for him.

I really enjoyed Eichenwald's previous book on the Archer-Daniels-Midland price fixing scheme, The Informant. Sure I know it might sound boring, but both books are cases where real life is more astounding than anything you could make up. When you look these up, I see Amazon serves up a suggestion of A Civil Action. Great book. If you're in the frame of mind, you don't want to miss Barbarians at the Gate either.