Conspiracy of Fools

Kurt Eichenwald's new book on the Enron scandals, Conspiracy of Fools, is being published today. It's richly-detailed and highly illuminating. Eichenwald portrays the debacle as an explosive combination of crime and incompetence. He shows how CFO Andy Fastow and his cohorts got away (for a while, at least) with cooking the books to inflate profits and line their own pockets through shady side deals. They were enabled by lots of people: other Enron executives and board members who approved their schemes without really understanding what they were doing, and all the accountants and bankers who were content to look the other way because Enron's business was so lucrative to them. A great cautionary tale.