6 Films About the Financial World You Need To Watch (While “The Wolf” is Not Around)

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)

This documentary investigates America’s –then- largest corporate bankruptcy, that of Enron Corporation. The film treats it more like a crime story than a financial or political issue. The picture basically shows how Enron managed to become (or actually, appeared to become) the seventh largest corporation in America, essentially based on a Ponzi scheme, and how, close to its end, it “robbed” its employees of their retirement funds in order to buy a little more time.

Interesting facts:
The film features several accounting tactics used to “enhance” a company’s financial results, like the mark-to-market method, and the hiding of its debt.
The picture is based on the book by Fortune Magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind.