What's the Biggest Constraint of Spread Sheeting?

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

In retrospect now, having read conspiracy of fools, I really, really liked it. My biggest criticism of it though is that it makes fast out to be the primary villain. Fast out stole about 40 to 60 million out of Enron directly, right? And lay and skilling didn't do that. But they made hundreds of millions of dollars on the equity. They didn't need to steal the money. It's like an exercise of the most path dependent spreadsheet of all time. Like this is such a clear illustration of incentives and behavior.

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…

If you want more Acquired, you can follow our public LP Show feed here in the podcast player of your choice (including Spotify!).

Sponsors:
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig24
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta
Crusoe: https://bit.ly/acquiredcrusoe

Links:

Carveouts!:

‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.