Power Failure
The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron
“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…
Mimi Swartz is a long-time executive editor at Texas Monthly, and a two-time National Magazine Award winner and a four time finalist. The coauthor of the national bestseller Power Failure, with Sherron Watkins, about the failures at Enron, her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Esquire, Slate, and her op-ed pieces appear regularly in the New York Times.
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Mimi Swartz with Sherron WatkinsSherron Watkins is a former Arthur Andersen accountant who joined Enron in 1993, working for the man who later became CFO, Andy Fastow. She worked in Enron's finance group, its International company, and its Broadband division, before returning to work for Fastow as a vice president in corporate development. As a result of her memos to Ken Lay urging the company to change its accounting practices and restate its earnings, she has become known to the world as the Enron whistleblower. She testified before both the House and the Senate in hearings investigating Enron's business practices in February 2002, and was named along with two others as one of Time magazine's 2002 Persons of the Year. She is the coauthor,…