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UNTIL THE SPRING OF 2001,THE HOUSTON energy giant Enron epitomized the triumph of the new economy. Feared by rivals, worshiped by investors,Enron seemingly could do no wrong, its profits rose every quarter; its stock price surged ever upward; its leaders were hailed as visionaries.

Then a young Fortune writer named Bethany McLean wrote an article posing a simple question--How, exactly, does Enron make its money?--and the company's house of cards began to collapse. Though other business scandals would follow, none has had the shattering effect of Enron's bankruptcy, which caused Americans to lose faith in a system that rewarded top insiders with millions of dollars while small investors,including many Enron employees, lost everything.

Despite enormous media coverage of Enron, the definitive story of its astonishing rise and fall comes alive for the first time in this gripping narrative by McLean and her Fortune colleague Peter Elkind.Drawing on a wide range of private documents and well-placed sources, many of them exclusive, McLean and Elkind lead you behind closed doors and deep into Enron's past, to picrcc the vcil of secrecy that has surrounded the company's inner workings and corrupt culture.

The Smartest Guys in the Room is fundamentally a human drama--of people drunk on their own success, people so ambitious, so certain of their own brilliance, so fueled by greed and hubris that they believed they could fool the world. The book explores the motives, thoughts, and secret fears of a fascinating array of characters, including:

Ken Lay, the genial but clueless CEO who reveled in the trappings of his office but ducked the responsibilities.From the earliest days of Enron, his weakness allowed greedy lieutenants to run amok.

作者简介：

Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind are Fortune senior writers.McLean,a former investment banking analyst for Goldman Sachs,lives in New York City.Her March 2001 article in Fortune,"Is Enron Overpriced?," was the first in a national publication to openly question the company's dealings.Elkind,an award-winning investigative reporter,is the author of The Death Shift.He has wiritten for The New York Times Magazine,The Washington Post,and Texas Monthly.He lives in Arlington,Texas.

Authors' Notes and Acknowledgments

Cast of Characters

Our Values

Introduction

CHAPTER

1. Lunch on a Silver Platter

2. "Please Keep Making Us Millions"

3. "We Were the Apostles"

4. The First Prima Donna

5. Guys with Spikes

6. The Empress of Energy

7. The 15 Percent Solution

8. A Recipe for Disaster

9. The Klieg-Light Syndrome

10. The Hotel Kenneth-Lay-a

11. Andy Fastow's Secrets

12. The Big Enchilada

13. "An Unnatural Act"

14. The Beating Heart of Enron

15. Everybody Loves Enron

16. When Pigs Could Fly

17. Gaming California

18. Bandwidth Hog

19. "AskWhy, Asshole"

20. "I Want to Resign"

21. The $45 Million Question

22. "We Have No Cash!"

EPILOGUE: Isn't Anybody Sorry?

Index

Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind collaborated on this book when they both were Fortune senior writers. McLean, a former investment banking analyst for Goldman Sachs, is now a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and lives in Chicago. Elkind, an award-winning investigative reporter, is now an editor-at-large for Fortune and lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

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当时没有人拍桌子，没有人说这些家伙们是无赖。他们认为自己拥有一群“金天鹅”，而这群金天鹅仅仅是从他们的小金库里偷了一点钱而已。

法斯托成为安然的奥兹魔法师，他开创了安然稳步发展且欣欣向荣的一派假象。法斯托及其团队充当财务策划者，帮助安然在生意现实与那种斯基林和莱想要展示给世人的美好景象之间的鸿沟上建起桥梁。他及其团队创造了资产负债表外的工具以及复杂的融资结构，还有一些至今仍很少有人能理解的扑朔迷离的交易。法斯托的控制领域是国际金融。

在法斯托还是一个高中生的时候，他就野心勃勃。然而这是一种很古怪的野心：没有必要成为最好的，但要从表面看起来是最好的。

作为一家会计公司，其首要的使命是为投资民众服务，而不是为被其审计的公司服务。安达信公司早期座右铭之一是“正直思考，直言不讳”。

随着时间的推移，随着咨询业反客为主的崛起，意味着会计准则的被腐蚀，安达信跨越了越来越多的界限。

早期的安达信会为了原则放弃会计业务，可到了20世纪90年代，几乎没有公司——包括安达信——还会这样做。

法斯托解释说，安然不能发行股票而减少股东的权益，也不能发行债务而伤害公司的信用等级。他接着解释了安然如何发行资产负债表外债务，并借此反哺安然股票。而正是这种策略后来引发了安然最后的危机。

安然从花旗银行借款5.79亿美元，然后又筹集到另外一笔5亿美元的资金，这些债务大部分来自于一个附属于花旗银行的实体，另外还有少量股票来自于其他投资者。清道夫反过来又利用这些购买10亿美元的安然优先股（剩下的7900万美元被用来帮助安然支付投资者的投资报酬）。

安然传奇是一个关于人性弱点的故事，是关于人性中的傲慢、贪婪和狂妄无知的故事；是任由野心胡作非为的故事；是在一个撤销管制的世界中的伟大经历；是一些精明人士自以为下一次赌博可以掩盖他们上一次灾难的故事——而且这些人没有承认他们是错的。

他十分注重建立和保持各种人际关系。在早期生活的每个重要阶段，他都建立了那种保持数十年之久的人际关系。这种关系可不仅仅是私人交情。在随后的生活中，为了谋得一份工作，为了得到帮助，或者为了拉拢信得过的人来到自己身边，他一次又一次地利用这张不断扩大的关系网。正是这种本事使得莱步步高升。

当他意识到能源危机必将改变古板的管道业时，莱认为自己退出政界投身商界的时机成熟了。

书籍介绍

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The definitive volume on Enron's amazing rise and scandalous fall, from an award-winning team of Fortune investigative reporters.

There were dozens of books about Watergate, but only All the President's Men gave readers the full story, with all the drama and nuance and exclusive reporting. And thirty years later, if you're going to read only one book on Watergate, that's still the one. Today, Enron is the biggest business story of our time, and Fortune senior writers Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind are the new Woodward and Bernstein.

Remarkably, it was just two years ago that Enron was thought to epitomize a great New Economy company, with its skyrocketing profits and share price. But that was before Fortune published an article by McLean that asked a seemingly innocent question: How exactly does Enron make money? From that point on, Enron's house of cards began to crumble. Now, McLean and Elkind have investigated much deeper, to offer the definitive book about the Enron scandal and the fascinating people behind it.

Meticulously researched and character driven, Smartest Guys in the Room takes the reader deep into Enron's past-and behind the closed doors of private meetings. Drawing on a wide range of unique sources, the book follows Enron's rise from obscurity to the top of the business world to its disastrous demise. It reveals as never before major characters such as Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow, as well as lesser known players like Cliff Baxter and Rebecca Mark. Smartest Guys in the Room is a story of greed, arrogance, and deceit-a microcosm of all that is wrong with American business today. Above all, it's a fascinating human drama that will prove to be the authoritative account of the Enron scandal.