There was going to be a lot of Chicago Board of Trade lingo in it, as well as Chicago politics lingo. There was also a big subplot where Skilling's company, Ceres, goes out to all the local farmers and agricultural co-ops in Illinois with their "Technology Solutions" group -- basically, they sell the farmers a bunch of high-tech equipment that they totally don't need and can't afford, and they also charge them for "special" information that only Skilling's broad resources can provide. This equipment includes a lot of grain-moisture analysis units, etc. Skilling also collects info from this equipment, which he uses to make more accurate predictions on upcoming harvests, quality of harvests -- basically, it gives him priceless insider info. So you've got all of these salesmen for Ceres making money on the packages they're selling to these farmers, and you've got the tech companies making money by selling this stuff as well. The problem is that the banks won't lend the farmers the money to buy this stuff, because they don't think the farmers can afford the payments. Naturally the salesmen and Ceres want to make the money, so they go to TRS -- the Illinois Teachers Retirement System, which holds about 18 billion dollars in the fund used to pay teachers' pensions. This money, like any pension fund, is invested in a wide variety of investments, stocks, bonds, etc. Ceres goes to the TRS Board, and says to them, "Look, the Big Banks have turned their backs on the farmers of Illinois. We're trying to give Illinois farmers the most state-of-the-art, technologically advanced agricultural system in the world, but the Banks won't do it -- we need TRS to help us out. We need Illinois' teachers to help Illinois Farmers'." Naturally the plan sounds fantastic. So TRS agrees to use its money to make these loans to the farmers, so they can put in all of this expensive equipment that Ceres is selling them. Everyone at Ceres knows these farmers don't need this stuff, but they're making money hand over fist, and TRS is making very loose loans. In fact, the folks at TRS that are supposed to be watching the quality of these loans have gotten schmoozed by the slick Chicagoans at Ceres (exactly how the auditors at Arthur Anderson were way too buddy buddy with the Enron folks), so they're approving huge loan amounts, and the money is going right from TRS into Ceres, and the farmers are racking up major debt. So naturally, the Ceres Tech group is trying to wring every penny they can out of these farmers, and they keep asking TRS to extend the aggregate loan amount. Everyone at TRS thinks this is great, ("Illinois teachers, helping Illinois' farmers) so TRS keeps loaning out more and more money. However, some people at TRS start worrying -- they have a lot of loans out, over 1B dollars worth, and they're not so sure that these loans are all going to be paid back. If the farmers start to default, TRS could be out an insane amount of money. So execs within the Ceres Technology Solutions group start to convince Skilling to inflate the futures prices of Corn and Soybeans, so that when the loan underwriters are calculating the future income of the farmers, to determine how big of a TRS loan they can afford, it seems like their future income is going to be as big as possible. If corn looks like it's going to be very expensive for the next five years, then the farmers can get bigger loans, and the sales guys can get bigger commissions. So they start to abuse this as well, and the prices on the futures start to balloon out of control. Now a new problem comes up. A lot of the traders working for Ceres start to realize that these prices have become massively inflated, so they start to make huge personal bets against these prices, knowing that these bogus prices have to come down eventually. But with Ceres money, they keep buying more and more expensive futures, to inflate the price and go along with the game. So they're using the Ceres money to inflate the prices, so that when they bet against it with their own money, they make even bigger profits. Eventually, the whole thing comes crashing down when Skilling, backed into a corner, suppresses a Storm Warning from the National Weather Service. With the populace unaware of the coming storm, a tornado ends up killing a six year old girl in Dixon, IL, and it comes out that Skilling suppressed the storm warning. In the ensuing press onslaught, the whole Ceres set-up is gradually revealed to the stunned citizens of Illinois. The futures prices drop through the floor, and Ceres can't come close to covering their positions. Investors in Ceres loose everything. Worse, thousands of Illinois farmers, saddled with huge TRS loans, are forced to go into bankruptcy; agriculture in Illinois will take decades to recover. TRS looses hundreds of millions of dollars to these bad loans, damaging the ability to meet the pension obligations to the retired teachers. And Tom Skilling is to blame for all of this.