Rebecca Smith

speaker

49 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Oct 2021 last heard Oct 2021

Rebecca Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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WSJ Your Money Briefing · Introducing Bad Bets · 16 Oct 2021 podcast

One of the strengths of American capitalism is the existence of generally agreed upon standards for what will be included in these public documents.

And they can be a treasure trove for reporters

These were not something that Enron had ever talked about in any setting I'd ever been in.

So it seemed to come out of the blue.

It's as simple as saying you can't serve two masters.

If you're in arrangements in which you're on both sides of a transaction, you're going to have to pick which side to favor.

They're never going to be equally treated.

We hit something, we bounce off, we go on another direction, we come back, we bounce against it again.

We're Roombas.

We just keep moving.

You know, their annual filing in 2000 said that these enterprises were conducting more than a billion dollars worth of business with Enron.

Well, that's a massive number.

But there was absolutely nothing in it to tell you what these relationships were.

It says, Enron has entered into agreements with entities formed in 2000, which included the obligation to deliver 12 million shares of Enron common stock in March 2005 and entered into... Yeah, it was basically gibberish.

And it absolutely defies the entire purpose of financial disclosure.

There's no information being conveyed through this.

I was so happy that we were able to do that because to me, and I've done this many times as a reporter, I think of these as a letter in the bottle.

You put the letter in the bottle, you toss it into the ocean.

You have no idea where it's going or if anyone's ever going to read it or pick up on it.

My first impression of him was that he sounded like someone who was very knowledgeable.

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