Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

A white-collar crime by definition is a crime that is committed by individuals of higher status. It is not necessarily a violent crime, but could be depending on the situation. An individual who works in a professional environment, such as the government or corporation tend to take advantage of employees and manipulate them into thinking their practices are legitimate. Some examples, of white-collar crimes include fraud, embezzlement, insider trading, and other various crimes. However, individuals who involve them selves in drugs or stealing someone’s personal possessions commit street crime. For example, it tends to be violent depending on the situation and it usually happens in a public place or …show more content…

Lou Pai made Enron a ton of money following the false practice of Lay and Skilling.
Structural humiliation is based on crimes that are not only propelled by motivation, but causes as well. Also, individuals who are rich or unfortunate become affected by the opportunities that arise in their life. This means that the one key factor that they both possess is committing crimes based on lifestyle. Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andy Fastow and Lou Pai are prime example. Although, they were very successful in their positions when they were young they knew what it felt like to come from the other end of the stick (i.e poor or not growing up around wealth). Those who are more fortunate such as the wealthy tend to “humiliate the poor through conspicuous consumption and the poor are humiliated as failures for being poor…. The propensity to feel powerless and exploited among the poor and the propensity of the rich to see exploiting as legitimate both, as we have seen, enable crime “ (Schlegel and Weisburd). Everyone becomes humiliated in some sense whether it is for fun by friend, family or by individuals who want revenge for doing it to them. Regardless of the humiliation it is embarrassing to be apart of and these top executives not only humiliated themselves, but also gave the impression that most people view big wigs as corrupted in some sense.
The people who were in the movie, Enron thought a lot about risk assessment, however, they did it