Introducing Bad Bets

Bold Names

The Wall Street Journal

Technology

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bad Bets is a new podcast series from The Wall Street Journal that unravels big-business dramas that have had a big impact on our world. This season, we're delving into Enron. In 2001, energy company Enron was at the height of its power. Then, out of the blue, CEO Jeffrey Skilling resigned-just six months after he took the reins of a company he had helped turn into an innovation machine. Why? In this episode, we dive into the first cracks in the Enron facade. John Emshwiller is the host of this season of Bad Bets. John and his Journal colleague Rebecca Smith did the original reporting on which this season is based. Bad Bets is a production of The Wall Street Journal. This season was produced in collaboration with Neon Hum Media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	With dedicated bankers for health care, a wide range of experience across
0:04.3	specialties and product solutions for payment management,
0:07.8	KeyBank is invested in the success of their clients' businesses.
0:11.7	Learn more at key.com slash healthcare.
0:15.5	Hey, future of everything listeners. It's Janet Babin.
0:18.8	The Wall Street Journal launched a new show last week called Bad Bets.
0:24.0	It's about the big business dramas that have had a big impact on our world.
0:29.2	Season one is about Enron, the 90s energy giant that later became synonymous with epic corporate
0:36.4	fraud. The reporters who covered the story for the Wall Street Journal, John M. Schweiler and
0:41.6	Rebecca Smith, they're back with key players from the saga to explain how and why it all fell apart.
0:49.2	Today, we're sharing episode one with you. If you like what you hear and want to keep listening,
0:54.3	you can subscribe to Bad Bets forever. You've listened to this podcast.
0:59.5	All right, here it is, episode one of Bad Bets.
1:05.1	My name is John M. Schweiler. For four decades, I was a Wall Street Journal reporter.
1:09.7	In that time, I wrote a lot of stories. There's one that stuck with me more than any other.
1:15.5	Enron. It's been 20 years now since Enron fell into bankruptcy.
1:20.4	Its list of creditors was 54 single spaced pages. So this was a massive bankruptcy filing.
1:28.2	Within weeks, tens of billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, gone. Retirement plans destroyed.
1:35.2	This was my life savings, my nest egg. And that was just the beginning. Congressional committees
1:41.2	rushed to investigate. The Justice Department launched an epic criminal probe, the CFO chief
1:47.1	accounting officer, Treasurer, and more than a dozen others pleaded guilty.
1:51.4	And perhaps the highest profile corporate fraud trial in U.S. history, former CEO Jeff
	...

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