Death-driven futures, or you can't spell deconstruction without enron

Cultural Critique

Volumn 65, Issue , 2007, Pages 6-42

  Ball, Karyn ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149364651     PISSN: 08824371     EISSN: 14602458     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/cul.2007.0001     Document Type: Review

References (67)

1. Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron (New York: Penguin, 2003)
2. The lack of oversight that nurtured Bourgets and Maestroenis actions foreshadowed Lays and Skillings "undersight" of Fastows modus operandi: creating off-the-books entities in order to transfer funds that would hide debts under deferred profits while nevertheless claiming cash bonuses from the deals. See Robert Bryce, Pipe Dreams and the Death of Enron (New York: PublicAffairs, 2003), 37-43
3. And Peter H. Frank, "Enron to Close Unit after Costly Trades," New York Times, October 23, 1987
4. In his study of the United States boom of 1982-95, Robert J. Shiller employs the term irrational exuberance to characterize investment behavior not grounded in "sensible economic fundamentals." Shiller argues that markets were overvalued; probable returns would therefore be much lower than hoped. The boom was actually a speculative bubble. Robert J. Shiller, Irrational Exhuberance (New York: Broadway Books, 2000)
5. Stuart Hall, "Introduction: Who Needs Identity?" in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall, 1-17 (London: Sage, 1996), 11
6. Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death (London: Sage Publications, 1993), 7
7. David Harvey, The Limits to Capital (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 254
8. Bryce, Pipe Dreams, 8
9. John C. Coffee Jr. writes, "In Enrons case, the firms strange failure is becoming a virtual Rorschach test in which each commentator can see evidence confirming what he or she already believed" (2)
10. John C. Coffee Jr., "Understanding Enron: Its the Gatekeepers, Stupid," Columbia Law School, The Center for Law and Economic Studies, Working Paper No. 207 (July 30, 2002), 1-28, http:// www.law.columbia.edu/law- economicstudies.
11. See also Richard Bassett and Mark Storrie, who in "Accounting at Energy Firms after Enron: Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease?" argue that "earnings can never be more than opinion and that cash flows are the real basis for corporate valuations" (Policy Analysis 469 [February 12, 2003]: 1-17 at 2)
12. Jacques Derrida, "Différance," in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass, 1-27 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 16
13. Derrida, "Différance," 8
14. See the second chapter of Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, vol. 13 (London: The Hogarth Press, 1968)
15. Paul-Laurent Assoun, Freud and Nietzsche, trans. Richard L. Collier Jr. (New York: Continuum, 2000), 76
16. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 38
17. Assoun, Freud and Nietzsche, 88
18. Derrida, "Différence," 19
19. Derrida, "Différance," 19
20. Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, 6
21. The death of labor is hereby "specialized" in Derridas sense and "exceptionalized" in Giorgio Agambens. See Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994)
22. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998)
23. And State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)
24. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), trans. Martin Nicolaus (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 461
25. See Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production, trans. Mark Poster (St. Louis, Mo.: Telos, 1975)
26. Harvey, The Limits to Capital, 266
27. Harvey, The New Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003)
28. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, vol. 35 (New York: International Publishers, 1998), 320 and 512
29. Harvey, The New Imperialism, 87-88
30. Wayne Hope, "Conflicting Temporalities: State, Nation, and Democracy within Global Capitalism," paper presented October 2005 at Collective for Critical Practices conference, "Out of Time: Theorizing Culture and the Political," at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
31. See Langley in this issue, and Frank Knights Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (New York: A. M. Kelley 1921)
32. Rebecca Smith and John R. Emshwiller, 24 Days: How Two "Wall Street Journal" Reporters Uncovered the Lies That Destroyed Faith in Corporate America (New York: HarperBusiness, 2003), 37
33. Harvey, The Limits to Capital, 253-54. Skillings practices also confirm Susanne Soederbergs assertion, in keeping with Harvey, that the problem of increasing underconsumption and decreasing outlets for profitable investment has led to a situation in which "investment in production is no longer as profitable as speculative investments in the stock market and foreign exchange markets."
34. See Soederbergs "Freedom, Ownership, and the Privatization of Social (In-)Security in the United States" in this issue
35. McLean and Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room, 39-42
36. Robin Blackburn, "The Enron Debacle and the Pension Crisis," New Left Review 14 (March/April 2002): 26-51 at 26
37. Martin Lipton, "The Millennium Bubble and Its Aftermath: Reforming Corporate America and Getting Back to Business," The M&A Lawyer 7, no. 3 (July/August 2003): 1-14 at 2, http://www.realcorporatelawyer.com/m&a/ m&a0703-0803.html
38. Coffee, "Understanding Enron," 3
39. Jeffrey N. Gordon, "What Enron Means for the Management and Control of the Modern Business Corporation: Some Initial Reflections," Columbia Law School, The Center for Law and Economic Studies, Working Paper No. 203 (Summer 2002), 7; http://www.law.columbia.edu/lawecl/
40. Blackburn, "The Enron Debacle," 31
41. John Paul Lucci, "Enron - The Bankruptcy Heard around the World and the International Ricochet of Sarbanes-Oxley," Albany Law Review 67, no. 1 (2003): 211-49 at 212 n. 3
42. See Josh Friedman, "CIBC to Pay $2.4 Billion in Enron Suit," Los Angeles Times, August 3, 2005, http:// www.latimes.com/business/ la-fi-enron3aug03,0,462333
43. "Enrons Friends in Need," New York Times, July 31, 2003, http://www .nytimes.com/2003/07/31/opinion/31THU3.html
44. Lipton, "The Millennium Bubble," 7
45. Paul Lansing and Christopher Grgurich, "The Sarbanes-Oxley Act: New Securities Disclosure Requirements in the United States," International Journal of Management 21, no. 3 (September 2004): 292-99 at 292
46. Lipton, "The Millennium Bubble," 1
47. Lucci, "Enron - The Bankruptcy Heard," 249
48. Steven L. Schwarcz, "Enron, and the Use and Abuse of Special Purpose Entities in Corporate Structures," Research Paper No. 228 (July 2002), Duke Law School Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, 1-10, http://ssrn .com/abstract_id+306820
49. "Viva Los Regulators," New York Times, April 3, 2005, http://www .nytimes.com/205/04/03/opinion/sunl.html
50. Gordon, "What Enron Means," 6
51. Blackburn, "The Enron Debacle," 39
52. Lipton, "The Millennium Bubble," 4
53. Blackburn, "The Enron Debacle," 37
54. Blackburn, "The Enron Debacle," 35
55. Gordon, "What Enron Means," 7-8
56. Gordon, "What Enron Means," 8
57. Thomas S. Mulligan, "Scandal of Enron Trial Is a Lack of Theatrics," Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2006, A1 and A22-23
58. See McLean and Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room, 269-70
59. See also Jonathan Peterson, "Tapes Reveal Enrons Power Plant Rigging: Transcripts Detail How Electricity Traders Conspired to Shut Down Smooth-running Generating Facilities during the Energy Crisis," Los Angeles Times, February 4, 2004, http:// www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-enron4feb04. story Read the transcripts and hear the tapes at http://www.enrontapes.com/ files.html
60. Blaine Harden, "Utility Exposes Enron Greed at Its Core: Exclusive Tapes Portray Lust for Profit, Lack of Concern for Consumers," Washington Post, March 1, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/ A61253-2005Feb28.html
61. Along with The Smartest Guys in the Room, see McLean, "Is Enron Overpriced?" March 5, 2001, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/ fortune_archive/2001/2001/03/05/ 297833/i
62. See also Mimi Swartz with Sherron Watkins, Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron (New York: Doubleday, 2003)
63. See, for example, Susan Warren, "Enrons Houston Trial Opens Wounds," Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2006, C3
64. "Women of Enron Uncover Their Hidden Assets," Playboy, August 2002, 118-27
65. Jacques Lacan, Encore: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 73
66. Quoted in Lucci, "Enron - The Bankruptcy Heard," 215 n. 24
67. See "Is Abramoff the New Monica?" http://select.nytimes.com/ 2006/01/15/opinion/15rich.html