yay enron

At least, yay Enron movie. It came from Blockbuster this weekend, and it was very good! The real title, the Smartest Guys in the Room, makes me laugh because that kind of short sightedness is hubris and idiocy, not brains. That's the difference between Microsoft's monopolies and Enron's. One of the two companies is run by smart people with real vision. The other by controlling, politically well-connected executives who need people to think they're smart.

Wait, why is it that Microsoft let this guy take over? Hmm...

At any rate, it was supremely timely as Ken Lay is just now testifying in his trial. I will never forget Murray Weidenbaum, an economics professor of Wash U's Weidenbaum Center, talking to our Honors class senior year about government regulation and energy markets and entertaining a few questions about Enron. It was amazing how Professor Weidenbaum essentially shrugged off Enron's collapse as if nothing had gone wrong. It was basically a PR problem for why people had such a skewed impression of what Kenny Lay was really doing. The problem in California was that they did deregulation badly (not that it's an illegitimate claim, but it is a little misleading, or at least driven by a particular agenda) not that Enron acted illegally. He is extremely knowledgeable and experienced; I still wonder why he was so willing to almost personally assure that there's no way there were improper things going on, particularly the intimate relationship between Enron's executives and the Bush family. Was it a man willfully blinding himself to avoid facing the brutality of a catastrophic failure of such a hands off approach by government which he has spent a lifetime advocating? Or perhaps a not so naive attempt to convince the next generation of business people that this almost fanatical market ideology should be pursued even in the face of real world results to the contrary? I would love to sit down with him for a few minutes and chat about energy markets after Enron. And speaking of professors I would love to have follow up conversations with, I had some fun discussions with Professor Roberts about the invasion of Iraq (among other issues). I wonder what he would have to say now?

And check this out. When Googling Weidenbaum, I came across this great letter about different schools. Apparently Wash U has tons of libertarian students. Maybe that's one of the things that attracted me subconsciously to the student body?

/end nostalgic glance at college wondering if I should be in an econ Phd program right now