The company's not giving guidance on just, hey, here's what we think revenue is going to be. What Enron is telling everyone is, I think the stock will go up. And when you comp all these executives and incentivize their bonuses against the stock price rather than against again, things in the company's control, like its revenues,. When you tie it all to stock performance, then it incentivizes everyone to do these crazy things of pump the stock so they get their bonuses.
The FTX fraud has dominated headlines now for weeks, during which we’ve debated if and how Acquired could uniquely add to the conversation. Then we realized there was an angle so perfect that we had to drop everything and enter Acquired research overdrive: Enron. Travel back with us to the granddaddy fraud of them all, 2001’s then-largest bankruptcy in US history and the impetus for the famous Sarbanes-Oxley Act. So much of Enron’s history parallels FTX that the uncanniness is almost unbelievable — right down to the same CEO running the two bankruptcies. Sit back and enjoy this crazy tale of villainy, greed, and the nature of humans and money. Maybe just don’t take notes on this one…
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