Analysis Of God Bless The Child

ENRON QUESTIONS

1. At the beginning of the movie, the song “God Bless the Child” by Billie

Holiday is used. This soundtrack is very significant in relation to the film since it

synthesizes the essence of the basis of all the executives’ transgressions: desire of

acquiring money and power. More specifically, the record transmits a message closely

related to former CEO Ken Lay’s childhood. Kenneth Lay had humble beginnings as

son of a preacher man, his mother worked a lot of shifts, and all three of them lived in a

farm; in summary, he came from a very poor family. As a result, Lay wanted his life to

be better, he grew ambitious, Ken wanted to make wealth for himself and move into the

world of business where (as a kid) he envisioned a situation of power and self-realization.

His strong resolution of never being poor again and intense yearning to achieve his goals

led him to climb the ladder of success and break boundaries in the business and politics.

2. Another main character that fell into the grasps of this vicious cycle was Jeff

Skilling, ex-Chief Operating Officer at Enron. Skilling said he was acting In benefit of

the shareholders, but reality is that he was acting in the benefit of himself. Someone

acting for the benefit of his or her shareholders would have had, at the very least, the

decency of showing the true financial statements of the corporation. Furthermore,

someone with an ounce of moral integrity would not have pocketed great quantities of

millions, which belong not only to the shareholders, but also to the employees and a wide

range of other stakeholders. The cognitive dissonance created by his words in comparison

to his actions is so great that is almost ludicrous, had it not ...

... middle of paper ...

...when it was not (30 billion in debt). Andy brought

was called structure finance. Fastow was smart. He created hundreds of companies

to erase Enron’s debts by making it look like the debts were liabilities instead of

the company’s bankruptcy. The irony is that Enron was not the only one taking

advantage of Fastow, because in the other hand Fastow was using Enron for his own

benefit. For outside investors, it looked like cash was coming in the door, however it

was just stashing its debt in Fastow’s companies, where investors could not see it. Andy

would skim a little bit of each transaction for himself. In fact, Fastow was doing basically

doing deals with himself, he had a dual role as Enron’s CFO and as head of these funds.

As others in the company, what motivated Andy Fastow was money, to make profits

without taking into consideration the means.