Posted on 01/11/2002 5:31:22 PM PST by PhiKapMom
WASHINGTON, D.C. — After Enron Corp. used its vast web of political connections to win December 2000 passage of commodities trading legislation that helped the company shield its energy trading activities from government scrutiny, California’s energy crisis suddenly took a dramatic turn for the worse as artificial supply shortages led to frequent rolling blackouts, according to a new Public Citizen report released Friday.
The legislation reducing government oversight of energy trading was muscled through Congress — without a Senate committee hearing — with the aid of U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas. Gramm was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over the legislation he co-sponsored, but he chose to bypass his committee, and the bill was quietly tacked onto a "must-pass" appropriations bill late in the session. Gramm’s wife, Wendy Gramm, also aided Enron’s rise to power. As chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, she pushed through a key regulatory exemption on Jan. 14, 1993, just as she was about to leave office. Five weeks later, she joined Enron’s board of directors, where she served on the board’s audit committee and had access to key financial information about the company.
On Sept. 4 of this year, Sen. Gramm announced that he would not run for re-election in 2002. Then in November, shareholders and federal regulators learned the extent of Enron’s financial troubles. Since the revelations, the company has filed the largest corporate bankruptcy in history, and shareholders, lenders and Enron employees have lost billions of dollars.
"Millions of people in California paid outrageously inflated prices for electricity because of Enron’s ability to manipulate the markets for electricity and natural gas, and thousands of Enron employees and shareholders have been devastated because of insider dealing and financial trickery," said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook. "Republicans in Congress investigated Whitewater for years and spent millions of dollars. But that pales in comparison to Enron-gate. Congress needs to turn over every rock and see what crawls out from underneath. They should ask, who knew what and when did they know it? Investigations into any criminal conduct should extend to the political players who aided and abetted this company’s rapacious rampage across America. We should make no distinction between the officers who committed these acts and the politicians who enabled them."
Public Citizen called on Congress to force Wendy and Phil Gramm and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill to testify under oath about their knowledge of Enron’s alleged accounting fraud and use of offshore tax and bank regulation havens. Public Citizen also said that President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and political adviser Karl Rove should also be required to answer questions about whether administration officials discussed policies involving energy price controls, other energy regulations or tax havens with Enron representatives. Bush adamantly resisted price controls even though California’s wholesale energy costs had almost quadrupled in 2000; at the same time, Enron’s trading revenues nearly tripled. link here
FYI, Enron was a very minor player in the California Power Crisis. Supplied something less than 5% of the total power purchases during the period under dispute and, if memory serves, had the second lowest cost/MWH.
The state's idiot AG might've wished Ken Lay jail-time with a cellmate named Spike, but there is no evidence (or even any cogent reason to believe) that Enron had anything whatsoever to do with the state's mismanagement (or creation) of the problem.
The response to Mr. Coelho should be "How come you and your friends did not express concern 2-3 years ago when the high-tech and dot.com companies started to go belly up, leaving thousands of workers with worthless 401(k) and option plans?"
Well, it would have stopped John McCain from accepting Enron political contributions. Of course, we know he could not help himself...
I gave a link in another thread where there is an article today in the on-line publication of the Arizona Republic which found that of all of our federally elected officials McCain took the most campaign money from Enron. Isn't that delicious?
Just all the more reason in McCain's mind, I suppose, to have CFR, so that he won't be able to take such money, as apparently he is not strong enough to say no.
Supposedly, no one at Enron knew anything was amiss until November 2.
Kinda like saying to someone I've got mine too bad for you.
Indeed. One of the biggest, most egregious "greedy price gougers" in the so-called California Power Crisis was the Los Angeles Dept of Water & Power.
Davis then hired its Director, David Freeman, an enviro-socialist (but a "greedy, price-gouging" enviro-socialist, evidently), to run the newly formed California Power Agency.
As yet, the Authority has no authority and no budget and no power. But it has a plan! Specifically, to replace "greedy, price-gouging" investor-owned power generators with a "greedy, price-gouging" (and bureaucratically bloated) state power authority that is unaccountable to the ratepayers.
Yeah, I heard about it.
If all that comes out of this is a couple low level bean counters losing their jobs, I would say the calls might have been useful.
I believe we can be confident that Robert Rubin's objective in calling was sure as hell a bail-out...
I won't put the kneepads on for these guys.
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