This blog is ending as of today, this will be the last post. I'd like to thank all the readers and contributors, especially the former Enron employees like "Dave."

It has been a great run, and successful enough to be extended one week beyond what we were originally sponsored for.

I'd also like to thank the movie Enron: The Smartest Guys In the Room for sponsoring this blog. I'd especially like to thank them for sponsoring it without putting any restrictions or conditions on what I write or what i write about.

I'd especially like to thank Weblogs for hiring me for this assignment, and for deciding that it went well enough to keep the blog going for an extra week.

If any readers are interested in digital video, I'll be writing for www.dvguru.com. I have greatly enjoyed closely following the Enron news, but I just graduated in February from film school and filmmaking is my main interest, so I'm looking forward to the new project.

This is my next to last post and my last roundup of Enron goodies from eBay. (See the 'goodbye' post for details).

The number of items has dropped still further to 86, which indicates to me that the huge numbers of items a few weeks ago were a result of people trying to cash in on the Enron movie.

The first item is this beautiful Enron Field Christmas ornament. A steal at $15.

Staying on the shiny bauble tip, check out this Enron sterling key ring. The starting bid is a bit steep at $49.99, but hey, it's jewelry. 

The documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,'' features Jeff Skilling in a skit mocking company accounting methods that were used to hide debt off the books.

"We're going to move from mark-to-market accounting to something I call HFV, or hypothetical future value accounting,'' Skilling says."If we can do that, we can add a kazillion dollars to the bottom line.''

Enron commissioned hundreds of videotapes, some of which were used in the documentary. Others have been used in the Enron Broadband Services trial, which is in progress. Still others may provide incriminating evidence at the January 2006 accounting fraud trial of Skilling, Ken Lay and Rick Causey.

"There's a lot that hasn't surfaced yet,'' said Alex Gibney, the documentary's director."Some of the stuff that is still out there is apparently not to be believed.''

At the end of the August 13, 2001 Enron board meeting, Ken Lay called for an executive session. This meant that only the board members could stay in the room.

In a short and extremely emotional meeting, Jeff Skilling announced his resignation. He was in tears. He told the board how much he loved Enron but also how guilty he felt that he hadn't "been there" for his children. He insisted that the press release announcing his resignation not say anything about his family, because he did not want his children to feel responsible.

He refused to allow the board to say he was resigning for health reasons, even though everyone present was worried about Skilling's mental health. Ken Lay later said that Enron's directors tried to convince Skilling to stay, but he was adamant.

He had already agreed to forfeit severance pay and to repay a $2 million loan. At 8:40, Skilling left the room. It had taken half an hour.

"Today's verdict is wrong... The reality here is that this verdict represents only a technical conviction."

Arthur Andersen issued this statement on June 15, 2002, six months after Enron filed for bankruptcy. The firm had just been found guilty of destroying evidence -- thousands of pages of Enron-related material that had been shredded at the prodding of David Duncan and Nancy Temple.

As a firm, Andersen was finished even before the trial, decimated by client defections once it became clear that this time the Justice Department was not going to look the other way. From the beginning through the bitter end, Andersen took the position that virtually everyone involved in the Enron scandal to one degree or another would embrace. Andersen claimed it was a victim -- A victim of an unjust, politically motivated prosecution and a victim of Enron itself.

Enron Corp. has been trying to get $122 million from the Snohomish County PUD, the utility that made Enron energy traders' recordings public. A provision that would make it harder to do that, survived in a U.S. Senate energy bill adopted Tuesday.

If Sen. Maria Cantwell's provision survives when the Senate bill is reconciled with a similar bill in the House of Representatives, the PUD will be in better shape in its long-standing battle with what's left of Enron.

Cantwell's measure would disallow Enron's bankruptcy lawyers to pursue the PUD for $122 million for canceling a 2001 electricity contract. The PUD first must win in a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission court before it can get out of paying Enron, however. That legal fight is slated for September.

Enron claims the PUD owes it $117 million -- now more than $122 million with interest -- because it cancelled a contract to buy electricity at inflated prices during the 2000-01 West Coast energy crisis.

The documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys In the Room, after its ninth weekend, continues to do well, having grossed well over $3.5 million.

As of last week it was on 81screens, down slightly from 91 last week. The per-screen average has gone down a tiny, tiny bit, from $1,296 to $1,220.

Last week, it grossed $98,842, down from $117,995 the previous week. Box office seems to be tapering off slowly and it appears the film still has some staying power left.

"I hereby resign my position as Chief Executive Officer of Enron Corp." So began the handwritten note addressed to Enron's board of directors. That line is scratched out. In small, barely legible handwriting, the writer starts over: "After much consideration [crossed out] evaluation and consideration, I have decided [crossed out] concluded that I cannot be effective in carrying out my duty as President and Chief Executive Officer of Enron Corp. Please accept my resignation effective immediately."

Jeff Skilling wrote his first resignation note on April 30, 2001, just three months into his tenure as CEO. He never sent it. But from his first day, he secretly had one thing uppermost in his mind: quitting.

In all the time he had been at Enron, Skilling had always seemed supremely confident. Now that he was CEO, the facade was crumbling.

Rebecca Mark's performance in pushing the Dabhol, India project ahead left at least one person (other than Jeff Skilling) unconvinced: Rich Kinder.

Ever the hardcore numbers guy, Kinder was skeptical of everything, but especially of Mark's business.

There was no way he could evaluate its performance, because so much of the profits were in the future, although already on the books through mark-to-market accounting.

But globalization had caught on, the board belonged to Ken Lay, and Mark was his star. To other Enron executives, it appeared as if Kinder was afraid to take her on, because he realized this was one battle that he would lose.

Joe Hirko, former co-CEO of the Enron Broadband Unit, testified Tuesday he didn't lie to Wall Street about the unit's capabilities in 2000 despite internal documents that indicated the network and software were still undeveloped.

Prosecutor Ben Campbell on Tuesday presented e-mails and internal documents generated before and after the January 2000 analyst conference that described the operating system as something that needed to be defined and developed. Hirko repeatedly said such communications meant a future version of what Enron already had, even though none mentioned a current version in operation.

A February 2000 memo to all broadband employees that Hirko said he helped draft and approved noted the analyst presentation included an announcement of a partnership with Sun Microsystems "to jointly develop a broadband operating system."

Citigroup's Houston energy trading unit, once offered up for sale, hired more than 30 people including former Enron executive Vincent Kaminski.

The operation now employs 40, including five executives who relocated from New York, Citigroup spokesman Joe Christinat said. The bank's Houston desk trades natural gas, electricity and crude oil, and plans to add coal and emissions.

Citigroup and rivals banks such as Merrill Lynch are returning to a business they once shunned as too volatile. Led by surging energy prices, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group both generated more than US$1 billion of revenue from energy trading last year. Oil prices have topped a record US$60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

"If they're going at the business from the standpoint of oil and refined-product trading, they could very well be late to the party,'' said Ethan Ravage, a San Francisco energy-trading consultant for the financial services industry. "If they're focusing on power trading, there's more room there.''

For all Jeff Skilling's public bravado about how great everything was at Enron, he spent most of his time dealing with a host of serious problems the part of the job he had always despised. Part of him was caught up in maintaining the illusion that Enron was indeed the "World's Leading Company," but it seems likely another part of him was forced to confront the darker reality of Enron's situation in 2001. Holding those two conflicting ideas in his head at the same time had to be exhausting.

Enron's stock price began dropping. The bull market had ended. The dotcoms went bust. Analysts, too, were starting to notice contradictions in Enron's numbers. Enron had posted fantastic earnings numbers for the first quarter of 2001.

Like all those in Jeff Skilling's small inner circle at Enron, Lou Pai, as CEO of Enron Energy Services, operated with his boss' unquestioning support. "Lou could do things that Jeff didn't like to do," says a longtime colleague. "Lou had no problem telling people that they had stupid ideas."

For years, the prickly Pai even treated Ken Lay's son, Mark, an early ECT employee (and an undistinguished performer) with undisguised disdain. Ken Lay complained to Skilling, agitating for Pai's head. Skilling refused to serve it up. "If he's gone, I'm gone." Skilling told the Enron CEO. So Lay backed off.

The big question is why. Why was Skilling so loyal to Pai, who certainly didn't reciprocate?

Although it ultimately ended in disaster for Enron, with a stopped project producing no income and a $900 million investment wasted, it made Rebecca Mark into even more of a rock star.

The press was fawning: "from near disaster, Mark and Enron have wrestled a victory," wrote Forbes. Pulitzer Prize-winning energy historian Dan Yergin told Fortune: "Rebecca is tops in her business." Jeffrey Garten, the dean of the Yale School of Management, said to Institutional Investor: "Enron has gained tremendous respect for their manner abroad... What developing countries want, especially in sophisticated energy industries, is first-rate American companies with the best of American management and technology. That's what Rebecca gives them." Garten added that Mark and Lay were "clearly willing to take major risks before they know what the endgame is in a business with huge capital requirements, and they are willing to stick it out through the ups and downs."

The day after Jeff Skilling resigned; Sherron Watkins spent two hours in her office typing an anonymous letter to Ken Lay, laying out her concerns over what she had found in examining Enron's books:

"Dear Mr. Lay,

Has Enron become a risky place to work? For those of us who didn't get rich over the last few years, can we afford to stay? Skilling's abrupt departure will raise suspicions of accounting improprieties and valuation issues.

She went on to ask "how do we fix the Raptor and Condor deals?" and went on to say "I am incredibly nervous that we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals. My eight years of Enron work history will be worth nothing on my resume, the businesses world will consider the past success as nothing but an elaborate accounting hoax.

She had her assistant drop the unsigned letter in a special box for questions to Lay at the upcoming employee meeting, to be held at the Hyatt. She didn't have it in her to remain anonymous. when Lay didn't address her issues at the meeting, she went to Cindy Olson, head of human resources, and identified herself as the letter writer. She agreed to speak to Ken Lay face to face.