Concern over Enron's links to British parties and politicians

The Independent ^ | Jan 12, 2002 | BEN RUSSELL

[CommiesOut]

Enron Collapse: Concern over Enron's links to British parties and politicians
The Independent - United Kingdom; Jan 12, 2002
BY BEN RUSSELL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

ENRON IS a company which has wooed figures in high places in Britain as well as across the Atlantic.

It gave thousands of pounds to the Labour Party in sponsorship after the 1997 general election. Lord Wakeham, the former Conservative energy secretary, now chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, has had a seat on the company's board since 1994. The peer is a member of the company's audit committee, according to the company's annual report for 2000.

Enron paid out nearly pounds 30,000 to Labour in sponsorship in 1997 and 1998. The company spent pounds 15,000 to fund drinks at the annual party conference dinner in 1998. It also paid pounds 7,500 for a table at the Labour Party gala dinner a year earlier. Enron Europe Limited gave the Labour Party more than pounds 5,000 a year between 1997 and 2000, according to party accounts.

Links between the company and Labour led to controversy after the company's pounds 1.4bn bid for Wessex Water was cleared by the then secretary of state for trade and industry, Peter Mandelson, without a reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. Mr Mandelson insisted at the time that his decision was in line with advice from the water regulator and the office of fair trading.

The episode was cited in a dossier prepared by Liz Davies, a left-wing member of Labour's national executive, in 1999. She warned against allowing commercial links which could be seen as creating a conflict of interest.

Enron also attracted Clare Spottiswoode, the former British gas industry regulator, who worked for the company's water arm, Azurix, as senior vice- president of regulatory affairs for a short time in 1998 and 1999. The appointment was cleared by the then Nolan Committee on standards in public life, which oversees job moves by former senior civil servants.

Enron, which employs 5,400 people in Britain, ran three gas-fired power stations on Teesside, and accounts for 10 to 15 per cent of all energy trading in the country. Some 150,000 homes and businesses use Enron electricity and gas.

The Conservatives said they had not received money from any branch of Enron.

All Material Subject to Copyright

[GROUCHOTWO]

Link #2 is interesting.
When Lay asked Greenspan to arrange for a private bailout like Greenspan had done for LTCM, he couldn't because 'it would be inappropriate'.
When Greenspan helped LTCM, he justified this by saying LTCM 'was too big to allow to fail'.
What's going on here?

[GROUCHOTWO]

Hehe. Arthur Anderson did a 'Hillary".

[CommiesOut]

I don't know.
Maybe W. doesn't belong to the good boys anymore?
Testimony Before the Committee
Failure could have caused substantial damage
The boys are very happy

[CommiesOut]

And legions of U.S. stock analysts were only too happy to tout Enron. They must have been solidly asleep all along. It should have been a warning to U.S. mutual fund owners that, in some cases, the analysts pushing Enron's stocks were the same guys who had promoted Russian energy companies just before the Russian stock market bubble burst in August 1998.

More

[CommiesOut]

baby crash

[GROUCHOTWO]

What was the difference between the bailout of LTCM and the non-bailout of Enron? The Wall Street fat cats had already bailed out of Enron, leaving the little guys to take the hit.

History repeats itself. In 1983 WHOOPS, the largest municipal bond failure in history, was another major fraud. While fraudulently propping up the bond ratings, Greenscam's friends dumped their holdings primarily on retirees. There were (haha) congressional investigations to prevent this from happening again (hoho).

The moral of this story is: Don't Trust Wall Street. The congressmen are their water boys.

[CommiesOut]

"The moral of this story is: Don't Trust Wall Street"

Unless you like to gamble and watch the damn thing on your PC on daily basis.

[GROUCHOTWO]

That's what we all are forced to do, in the meanwhile the fat cats pretend there is no such thing as good old boy inside information. No risk there.

[CommiesOut]

Alan Greenspan, Physicist?

Nov. 15, 2001 High-profile Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says achieving his position as possibly the world's best-known economist was a matter of chance.

According to Greenspan, the path to celebrity economist started with his day job as a professional musician, playing in a dance bands at universities.

"I found that in the 20-minute breaks we'd have in between sets that I started to go to the library and read books on economics. Why? I haven't a clue," he told an audience at Rice University in Houston this week.

"If I had turned left instead of right (in the library), I may have ended up as a physicist for all I know," he said, drawing laughter from the crowd. "And that is the best economic move -- judgment -- I have ever made," the multimillionaire said.
link

[GROUCHOTWO]

This is the best! Greenspan's resume is so much funnier than a Seinfeld sit-com.

So Greenspan started into economics with his 20 minute breaks while playing in dance bands at universities!
It's not hard to figure out that this old fart routinely picks up his marching orders from his fat cat handlers and the obedient media busily create myths about his 'genius'.

[CommiesOut]

Losers apart, there will be many dancing on Enron's grave. In the US, it had attracted a degree of notoriety for its part in the bungled privatisation of California's electricity, which led to black-outs earlier this year. But it was in the developing world that Enron had a near unparalleled reputation for corporate irresponsibility. It has been the only company to warrant an entire Amnesty International report, a chilling catalogue of human rights abuses from India to Latin America. The anti-corporate movement accused Enron of subverting the political process of virtually every country in which it operated to advance its interests. Enron was in the thick of one of India's biggest corruption scandals in which huge sums were paid to politicians in the privatisation of electricity firms.

The world's leading company

[Lady In Blue]

Bump.

[GROUCHOTWO]

Link emphasizes the important reproof to stock traders who continued to boost this unworthy stock.

[CommiesOut]

Price of power

[GROUCHOTWO]

Also hidden in this story is the fact that there is no longer such an animal called a 'Public Servant'. Politicians now must serve those who fund them.