In his Daily News column, Stanley Crouch writes that the Occupy Wall Street movement has made public an awareness that has taken a while to develop — but which can be perfectly understood if one takes the two hours necessary to watch the 2005 documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. He says that the monumental collapse of Enron in many ways presaged what is happening in corporate America today.
… What separates the Enron documentary and its warning signs about the coming storm from the blinding blizzard of trivia we encounter today is its clarity of focus. The film provides a clear explanation of how the snowballing hustle that almost took down the entire economy began with deregulation — and what that did to our country.
Once the money began gushing into Enron, ethics went out the window. Then came similar scandals at WorldCom and Tyco International and, a few years later, the foreclosure flood. It goes on today, with former Goldman Sachs chief and ex-New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine having lost some $600 million in the shady dealings of MF Global, which he had lately been running.
Watching the Enron documentary today, and knowing of the disasters that were about to come, is the very best response to hysterical nonsense like Eric Cantor's warnings about "class warfare."
Cantor, the Virginia conservative, still believes that Wall Street is not to blame; that billionaires are faultless; and that the minions of Rupert Murdoch will continue to have the now-famous "99%" under their spell. But he is wrong.
Read Stanley Crouch's complete column at the Daily News.