Bigger Than Enron – PBS Documentary (2002)

By Sandeep on Aug 27, 2012 with Comments 0

Bigger Than Enron: This PBS documentary film is 1 hour long and released in the year 2002. The writers Hedrick Smith and Marc Shaffer said about the documentary film, that Enron’s meteoric rise and collapse revealed a watchdog system that was neglected. However, in the 1990s, above 400 corporations dramatically restated their value after accounting lapses, fraud or failures.

Bigger Than Enron: This PBS documentary film further says that, Enron’s breakdown in late 2001, startled Congress and brought pressing calls for reform. The house and senate held hearings and innovated the legislation to reform the accounting industry. However, to that extent no bill has passed in both chambers and been signed into law. Instead, after extended criticism for moving too slowly and being too soft on the accounting firms, SEC chairman Harvey Pitt has taken the first step, announcing on June 20, and his proposal for a new Public accountability board. However, critics still say that his plans were too weak, and question whether, he was really prepared to cross his former clients in the accounting industry, which he represented as a top Wall St. lawyer throughout the 1990s.

Bigger Than Enron: In this PBS documentary film it is being explained that, all of this would be no big deal, if the only thing at stake here, was his own professional frustration. However, something was more serious going on. Viewers deserve to know the truth that, what if corporations and someone’s do; when those actions bear directly on our well being and health. If a corporation is scamming investors, it should not be able to cover that up, by quietly paying off dupes and their lawyers one at a time. The same goes to a hospital that is harming patients or a company that makes dangerously defective products. It should be a criminal act to hide these problems. Yet this kind of secretiveness is part and parcel of the American legal system.

The firm Andersen comes clean to the SEC, rather than try to sanitize and shred its own documents, may be they could have cut a deal, completes with a gag order, and nobody would have been wiser for it.