Enron

[alphajerk]

why would you commit suicide in the turning lane in the middle of the street?

[the stranger]

NPR reported the other day that Monday congress was reconvening. At least ten committees would be investigating the Enron matter. Every person on each of these committees recieved campaign money from Enron. I doubt any sort of justice will be come of this.

[Empty Planet]

Paul Solmon turned in a great story on this topic on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer. For those of you with RealAudio, here's the link to the page, though the text is there as well. :cool:

[BP3]

Apparently the suicide note asked for protection for his family (as reported on MSNBC). Could it be that his family was threatened unless he offed himself? Seems likely to me.

[Flea man]

This is a report by Public Citizen called "Blind Faith". The full pdf "Blind Faith" report can be downloaded via the link below. Seems like business as usual to me. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS The combination of unregulated state wholesale electricity markets and federal deregulation of commodity exchanges has removed accountability and transparency from the energy sector, allowing corporations to manipulate price and supply of electricity and natural gas through the exercise of significant market power. California's recent energy crisis and Enron's bankruptcy would have been impossible under a regulated system. Enron developed mutually beneficial relationships with federal regulators and lawmakers to support policies that significantly curtailed government oversight of their operations. Enron's business model was built entirely on the premise that it could make more money speculating on electricity contracts than it could by actually producing electricity at a power plant. Central to Enron's strategy of turning electricity into a speculative commodity was removing government oversight of its trading practices and exploiting market deficiencies to allow it to manipulate prices and supply. Dr. Wendy Gramm, in her capacity as chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), exempted Enron's trading of futures contracts in response to a request for such an action by Enron in 1992. At the time, Enron was a significant source of campaign financing for Wendy Gramm's husband, U.S. Senator Phil Gramm. Six days after she provided Enron the exemption it wanted, Wendy Gramm resigned her position at the CFTC. Five weeks after her resignation, Enron appointed her to its Board of Directors, where she served on the Board's Audit Committee. Her service on the Audit Committee made her responsible for verifying Enron's accounting procedures and other detailed financial information not available to outside analysts or shareholders. Following Wendy Gramm's appointment to Enron's board, the company became a significant source of personal income for the Gramms. Enron paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary, attendance fees, stock option sales and dividends from 1993 to 2001. The value of Wendy Gramm's Enron stock options swelled from no more than $15,000 in 1995 to as much as $500,000 by 2000. Enron became the single largest corporate source of campaign financing for Phil Gramm, contributing nearly $260,000 from 1993 to 2001. Days before her attorneys informed Enron in December 1998 that Wendy Gramm's control of Enron stock might pose a conflict of interest with her husband's work, she sold $276,912 worth of Enron stock. Enron spent $3.45 million in lobbying expenses in 1999 and 2000 to deregulate the-4- trading of energy futures, among other issues. In December 2000, Phil Gramm helped muscle a bill through Congress without a committee hearing that deregulated energy commodity trading. This act allowed Enron to operate an unregulated power auction — EnronOnline — that quickly gained control over a significant share of California's electricity and natural gas market. Phil Gramm's legislation was in conflict with the explicit recommendations of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, which is composed of representatives from the Department of Treasury, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Working group expressly recommended against deregulating energy commodity trading because the traders would be in strong positions to manipulate prices and supply. From June 2000 through December 2000 — prior to the bill's passage — California experienced significant price spikes but only one Stage 3 emergency (requiring “rolling blackouts” ;) . After passage of Gramm's energy commodity deregulation bill in December 2000, Stage 3 emergencies increased from one to 38 until federal regulators helped end the crisis by imposing price controls in June 2001. Phil Gramm's legislation, for which Enron was the primary lobbyist, allowed Enron's unregulated energy trading subsidiary to manipulate supply in such a way as to threaten millions of California households and businesses with power outages for the sole purpose of increasing the company's profits. Because of Enron's new, unregulated power auction, the company's “Wholesale Services” revenues quadrupled — from $12 billion in the first quarter of 2000 to $48.4 billion in the first quarter of 2001. This remarkable revenue increase came on top of the record revenue gain that Enron posted from 1999 to 2000, when full-year “Wholesale Services” revenues increased from $35.5 billion to $93.3 billion — a 163 percent increase. Investigations by state and federal officials concluded that power generators and power marketers intentionally withheld electricity, creating artificial shortages in order to increase the cost of power. Enron took advantage of lax oversight following deregulation and formed a complicated web of more than 2,800 subsidiaries — more than 30 percent (874) of which were located in officially designated offshore tax and bank havens. President Bush's presidential campaign received significant financial support from Enron ($1.14 million). Upon assuming office in 2001, Bush promptly scrapped plans put into place by former-5- President Bill Clinton to significantly limit the effectiveness of these countries as tax and bank regulation havens. This action came at the height of high West Coast energy prices, probably allowing Enron to siphon billions to its offshore accounts. At the same time, the Bush administration and certain members of Congress waged a legislative and public relations campaign against the imposition of federal price controls in the Western electricity market. Such price controls remove the ability of companies exercising significant market share to price-gouge by effectively re-regulating the market. Bush's opposition to price controls unnecessarily extended the California energy crisis and cost the state billions of dollars. When federal regulators finally imposed strict, round-the-clock price controls over the entire Western electricity market on June 19, 2001, companies operating power auctions (like Enron) no longer had the ability to charge excessive prices and no longer had incentive to manipulate supply. While price controls clearly saved California, Enron suffered because it could no longer manipulate the market and price-gouge consumers. With no significant asset ownership to offset its losses, Enron's unregulated power auction quickly accumulated massive debts. At the same time, the curtailed revenue flow made it more difficult for executives and members of the Board to conceal the firm's accounting gimmicks. Amid the turmoil, CEO Jeff Skilling resigned in August. But shareholders and federal regulators did not learn of the severity of Enron's financial trouble until November 2001. At this time, Enron's top executives continued to receive significant bonuses. Due to Wendy Gramm's position on Enron's Audit Committee, she had intimate knowledge of Enron's financial structure and had access to sensitive financial information not available to Wall Street analysts or average shareholders. It is therefore probable that she knew of Enron's possibly fraudulent practices for some time and that her husband would have known as well. Enron's 874 tax haven subsidiaries allowed Enron to funnel billions of dollars to offshore accounts. The Gramms' close involvement with Enron's corporate and legislative activities, the Gramms' possible knowledge and/or connection to criminal misconduct relating to Enron's collapse, and the effects of Enron's layoffs and other economic impacts on Senator Gramm's constituents may have been the leading factor in Gramm's decision on September 4 not to seek re-election to the Senate in 2002. [url=http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7138]Link to full "Blind Faith" pdf report[/url] Flea man

[MusicWorkz]

DO THEY THINK WE ARE DUMB??? I had to share this B/S from Bush in Today's New York Times: January 29, 2002 Bush Says Privacy Is Needed on Data From Enron Talks By STEPHEN LABATON and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 — President Bush today defended his refusal to turn over to Congress information about contacts between Enron (news/quote) and the administration's energy task force, saying the request was "an encroachment on the executive branch's ability to conduct business." "We're not going to let the ability for us to discuss matters between ourselves to become eroded," the president said this afternoon at a session with reporters. "It's not only important for us, for this administration, it's an important principle for future administrations." The president's comments, which were similar to remarks made over the weekend by Vice President Dick Cheney, makes a constitutional showdown between the White House and the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, all but inevitable. The accounting office has sought White House records about a series of meetings last spring between the vice president's energy task force and executives from Enron, an energy trading company, and other companies. David M. Walker, who as comptroller general of the United States heads the accounting office, said in an interview after the president's remarks, "Once the administration decided to create this task force and put the vice president in charge, we believe that changed the matter to clearly give the Congress and the G.A.O. right of access." Mr. Walker added, "If all you have to do is create a task force, put the vice president in charge, detail people from different agencies paid by taxpayers, outreach to whomever you want and then you can circumvent Congressional oversight, that's a loophole big enough to drive a truck through." Mr. Walker said he would decide by the end of the week whether to sue the administration and suggested that such a move was a near certainty. He said the accounting office was not seeking details like the minutes of meetings or notes of conversations but wanted to find out "who met with whom, when and about what." Mr. Bush took strong exception to the characterization by some Democratic lawmakers that the proposals recommended by the energy task force in May reflected a "wish list" for Enron. "Well, Enron went bust," Mr. Bush said. "Shortly after the report was put out, Enron went broke, and it went broke because, it seems like to me — and we'll wait for the facts to come out — it went broke because there was not full disclosure of finances." Repeating a regular theme of the White House, he described Enron's downfall as "a corporate governance issue" and not a political scandal affecting his administration. Nonetheless, there were signs that the administration remained as preoccupied as the rest of Washington with Enron. Karen P. Hughes, a senior adviser to Mr. Bush, said some of "what went wrong" could be traced back to the Clinton administration. "There are legitimate questions as to where were the federal regulators when these accounting practices were occurring at Enron," Ms. Hughes said on the CNN program "Inside Politics." Her remarks prompted strong protest from some Clinton advisers. "The Clinton administration time and time again tried to enact legislation to protect the public from this kind of greed," said Paul Begala, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, "and they were blocked at every turn by Congressional Republicans." On Capitol Hill, Senator Paul S. Sarbanes, Democrat of Maryland, who is chairman of the Banking Committee, said he intended to closely question Mr. Bush's nominees to the Securities and Exchange Commission about their views on regulating the accounting industry, whose performance has come under sharp criticism in the Enron case. Mr. Bush has nominated two partners from accounting firms to commission openings. Congressional investigators, too, picked up the pace of their myriad Enron inquiries. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, at a hearing on Tuesday morning, will examine whether energy legislation needs to be strengthened in the aftermath of the Enron collapse. It will also question any Enron role in the California energy crisis. The committee, the third in Congress this year to study fallout from the Enron case, will also focus on whether enough is being done to ensure that the nation is building enough power plants, transmission lines and pipelines for natural gas. In addition, the panel will examine whether more needs to be done to guard against price spikes in wholesale energy markets. "The larger question," said Senator Jeff Bingaman, the New Mexico Democrat who is chairman of the committee, "is whether the regulatory structure that's currently in place is adequate to ensure the effective functioning of these markets, and to what extent does the Enron collapse cause us to believe we should be doing more?" Mr. Bingaman said the Enron debacle demonstrated the need for new laws or regulations for accounting firms and for 401(k) retirement plans, but he said it was not yet clear whether that also held true for the nation's energy markets. "I want to see if the various regulatory agencies have the authority they need under current law," he said. The committee is expected to discuss whether the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission needs additional authority to crack down when prices for electricity or natural gas soar. The commission, whose new chairman, Patrick Wood III, is scheduled to testify, came under withering criticism a year ago from California officials who asserted that the agency failed to punish efforts by power generators and traders to drive up electricity prices. Mr. Wood, whom Enron endorsed for the job, has acknowledged recently that his agency has much to learn about deregulated energy markets and that it faces difficult challenges in understanding the operations of some of the companies it regulates. At the hearing on Tuesday, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, plans to ask questions about Enron's opposition to the price restraints and the profits it made in California from trading electricity and natural gas. She has also asked Mr. Bingaman for a hearing to examine Enron's role in the crisis, asserting in a letter that "Enron's ability to deal in complex unregulated financial derivatives" was "very likely a key factor in driving up gas and electricity prices." The committee is expected to focus on whether legislation is needed to tighten gaps in the regulation of energy commodity markets, and testimony is expected from James E. Newsome, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. One subject the panel is expected to discuss is a provision Enron and other companies won two years ago that exempted their online trading platforms from regulation under the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. The most anticipated appearance will come on Monday, when Kenneth L. Lay, Enron's former chief executive, is set to appear before two committees. In a preview of what he might say, members of his family appeared on television today to discuss the hardships they have suffered in recent months. Mr. Lay's wife, Linda, suggested that the family was struggling to avoid bankruptcy, even though Mr. Lay has collected more than $300 million from Enron since 1989, mostly through the exercise of stock options. "Everything we had mostly was in the one stock," she said on the NBC program "Today." "Other than the home we live in," Ms. Lay said, "everything else is for sale." In his remarks today, Mr. Bush suggested that the company had not received anything from the administration for all its political contributions. "There are some on Capitol Hill who want to politicize this issue," he added. "This is not a political issue. It's a business issue. It's a business issue that this nation must deal with. And, you know, Enron had made contributions to a lot of people around Washington, D.C. And if they came to this administration looking for help, they didn't find any." He also suggested that Enron's collapse, and the loss of billions of dollars in investments by shareholders and employees, may warrant "reform of the pension system." A group of 400 employees from Enron today filed the latest lawsuit against the company in an effort to regain some of the money they lost in stock held in their 401(k) plans. In Chicago today, the chief executive of Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm whose audits of Enron have made it a target of investigators probing the company's collapse, acknowledged that the firm was losing business because of the affair.

[alphajerk]

i think both bush and cheney need a good impeachin...

[Henchman]

They tried to crucify Clinton for getting a BJ in the Whitehouse. And that didn't affect anyones pension or future. These fuckers will get away scott-free, with a pat on the back from congress. Yeah, that's it, Living the American dream baby.