Fat Cats and Running Dogs: The Enron Stage of Capitalism

by Vijay Prashad

From the author of two Village Voice books of the year comes a ruthless exposé of the raptors at Enron. Behind the screams over workers' disappearing pensions, disappearing jobs, and disappearing CEO responsibility lies a bigger story: What Enron has done to the world. Included is "A Manual for Corporate Terrestrial Conquest," complete with juicy tips for imperialist globalization:

how to fix prices using ADM as a model; how to enlist the henchmen of the imperial state (such as the CIA's economic espionage division and USAID, as Enron has done);
and how to use terrorism and the drug war to push for more corporate control as Enron did in Colombia.

Prashad shows we have come full-circle, back to the imperialism practiced by the East India Company from 1600-1857. Even as Enron collapsed, Enronism is the new normal. A new level of criminality. Criminality perfected by Enron.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Vijay Prashad is an Indian Marxist historian, journalist, political commentator, and editor. He is the executive director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, editor of LeftWord Books, writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, and a senior non-resident fellow at the Renmin University of China's Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies. Prashad is known for his criticisms of capitalism, neocolonialism, American exceptionalism, and Western imperialism, and his support for communism and the Global South.

He attended The Doon School as a child. He records that he was subjected to violent rape in his early teens while at school. He received a BA from Pomona College in 1989 as well as a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1994, writing a dissertation under the supervision of Bernard Cohn.

He was the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and a professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1996 to 2017.

He also has provided political commentary for Monthly Review and Salon. He has had three articles published in The Nation. With Tings Chak he edits the international edition of the Chinese journal Wenhua Zongheng.

He is an advisory board member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement,[26] and co-founder of the Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL).