ENRON and the Gramms

[Octafish]

Smiles all around as Mr. Herbert pegs a pair of puke greedhead power pairings:

Enron And the Gramms

By BOB HERBERT
The New York Times
Published: January 17, 2002

When Senator Phil Gramm and his wife Wendy danced, it was most often to Enron's tune.

Mr. Gramm, a Texas Republican, is one of the top recipients of Enron largess in the Senate. And he is a demon for deregulation. In December 2000 Mr. Gramm was one of the ringleaders who engineered the stealthlike approval of a bill that exempted energy commodity trading from government regulation and public disclosure. It was a gift tied with a bright ribbon for Enron.

Wendy Gramm has been influential in her own right. She, too, is a demon for deregulation. She headed the presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief in the Reagan administration. And she was chairwoman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 until 1993.

In her final days with the commission she helped push through a ruling that exempted many energy futures contracts from regulation, a move that had been sought by Enron. Five weeks later, after resigning from the commission, Wendy Gramm was appointed to Enron's board of directors.

According to a report by Public Citizen, a watchdog group in Washington, ''Enron paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary, attendance fees, stock options and dividends from 1993 to 2001.''

SNIP...

An article in yesterday's Times noted the extensive links between Enron and the powerful Texas congressman Tom DeLay. Mr. DeLay became unhappy when Enron wooed a Democrat -- a senior treasury official in the Clinton administration -- to run its Washington office. ''Still,'' the article said, ''whatever the tensions last year, Mr. DeLay and Enron had a natural alliance. In his days in the Texas Capitol, Mr. DeLay was called Dereg by some because of his support of business. And in Congress he has been a longtime proponent of energy deregulation, an issue dear to Enron.''

CONTINUED...

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E0D81038F934A25752C0A9649C8B63

This is just the tip o' the iceberg. Wendy Gramm connects to BCCI.

[midnight]

1. Interesting. I clinked on your link and got an Error message.

[Octafish]

3. Sorry about that. Try these...

The first is an archived article from The New York Times. It may require going to Bob Herbert's OpEd page at the NYT and searching Enron + Gramm.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/bobherbert/index.html

Enron and the Gramms

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E0D81038F934A25752C0A9649C8B63


This one's from the Old DU...

Guess who ties ENRON to BCCI? (Wendy Gramm)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=7548&forum=DCForumID70&archive=

[tabatha]

2. No, problem, I was able to read it.

I guess the Gramms can be summed up: "If you dont'cheat, you whine."

[Octafish]

4. ''The story of Enron is the story of unmitigated pride and arrogance.''

Welfare for the rich. Laissez-faire for the proles.

From the CatbirdSeat.net:

The Story of Enron

“The story of Enron is the story of
unmitigated pride and arrogance.”

– Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor, Stanford Business School

EXCERPT...

… During the Reagan/Daddy Bush Administrations, Wendy Gramm was for twelve years head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, regulating the commodity industry. As pointed out earlier in this series, she was reportedly the recipient of bribes along with her husband who has decided not to run for re-election as U.S. Senator (R., Texas), Phil Gramm. While leaving office she pushed through regulations freeing Enron from supervision.

She also reportedly covered up the bribery, by the infamous bank, BCCI, of 28 members of the U.S. Senate and 108 members of the House of Representatives.

As part of the apparent Enron cover up, Wendy was a Board Member AND on the inner auditing committee. She reportedly helped cover up the massive money laundering by Enron/Marc Rich International through the Chicago markets and major money center banks.

=== As mentioned in Part Two of this series, the Federal Reserve siphoned off 60 billion dollars of Enron funds, hidden partnership deals (some with Marc Rich International), and using fractional reserves, and derivatives hocus-pocus, has been temporarily pumping up the Dow Jones 30 Industrials.

=== Only fools would trust the Internal Revenue Service to supposedly investigate why and how Enron did not pay income taxes. In a series on IRS high-level corruption, we showed how their top brass are riddled with corruption including operating an ocean-going vessel, "California Rose", as a floating money laundry for illicit funds.

Other info on ENRON and the BFEE …

http://www.kycbs.net/ENRON.htm

Well said, tabatha: "If you don't cheat, you whine."

The Gramms and their bosses in the Bush and Reagan and Bush "administrations" used their office to pad their pockets and penure the American people.

The day can't get here soon enough when we see these cheating turds appear in court to answer how their corruption in public office makes them traitors.

[n2doc]

5. This part is so true:

"Who's left to look out for the small fry?

If the deregulation zealots had their way, we'd be left with tainted food, unsafe cars, bridges collapsing into rivers, children's pajamas bursting into flames and a host of corporations far more rapacious and unscrupulous than they are now.

Enron manipulated the energy markets and cooked its own books in ways that would not have been possible if its operations had had a reasonable degree of transparency. But Enron operated in what has been widely characterized as a ''black hole'' that left competitors and others asking such basic questions as how the company made its money.

How long will it take? How many decades and how many scandals have to come and go before we catch on? We're human. We're self-interested. And when left to our own devices, some of us will do the wrong thing."

[Octafish]

8. W.'s First Enron Connection: Update on the Bush-Enron Oil Deal

In the new economic order, We the Small Fry don't stand much of a chance when the powers-that-be are born on third base.

W.'s First Enron Connection: Update on the Bush-Enron Oil Deal

posted by David Corn
The Nation Blog
on 03/04/2002 @ 1:57pm

Editor's note: Below is David Corn's article, posted on March 4, 2002, that first broke news of the Bush-Enron oil deal. An update follows.

Did George W. Bush once have a financial relationship with Enron? In 1986, according to a publicly available record, the two drilled for oil together--at a time when Bush was a not-too-successful oil man in Texas and his oil venture was in dire need of help. Bush's business association with Enron, it seems, has not previously been reported.

In 1986, Spectrum 7, a privately owned oil company chaired by Bush faced serious trouble. Two years earlier, Bush had merged his failing Bush Exploration Company (previously known as Arbusto--the Spanish word for shrub) with the profitable Spectrum 7, and he was named chief executive and director of the company. Bush was paid $75,000 a year and handed 1.1 million shares, according to "First Son," Bill Minutaglio's biography of Bush. Under this deal, Bush ended up owning about 15 percent of Spectrum 7. By the end of 1985, Spectrum's fortunes had reversed. With oil prices falling, the company was losing money and on the verge of collapse. To save the firm, Bush began negotiations to sell Spectrum 7 to Harken Energy, a large Dallas-based energy firm owned mostly by billionaire George Soros, Saudi businessman Abdullah Taha Baksh and the Harvard Management Corporation.

The deal took months to work out. In September of 1986, Spectrum 7 and Harken announced they had reached an agreement. Spectrum 7 shareholders, under the plan, would receive Harken stock. Bush publicly said that Spectrum 7 would continue to operate in Midland, Texas, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Harken and that he would become an active member of Harken's board of directors. As Minutaglio noted, the deal would give Bush about $600,000 in Harken shares and $50,000 to $120,000 a year in consultant's fees. It also would provide $2.25 million in Harken stock for a company with a net value close to $1.8 million.

As the details of the Spectrum-Harken acquisition--which Bush badly needed--were being finalized, Enron Oil and Gas Company, a subsidiary of Enron Corporation, announced on October 16, 1986, that it had completed a well producing both oil and natural gas in Martin County, Texas. An Enron Oil and Gas press release reported the well was producing 24,000 cubic feet of natural gas and 411 barrels of oil per day in the Belspec Fusselman Field, 15 miles northeast of Midland. Enron held 52 percent interest in the well. According to the company's announcement, 10 percent belonged to Spectrum 7. At that point, Spectrum 7 was still Bush's company. Harken's completion of the Spectrum 7 acquisition was announced in early November.

To spell it out: George W. Bush and Enron Oil and Gas were in business together in 1986--when Ken Lay was head of Enron. (Lay was named Enron chairman in February of that year.) How did this deal come about? Was this the only project in which Bush and Enron were partners? A call placed to the White House produced no response. Karen Denne, an Enron spokeswoman, says "I can't tell you anything about" that project, explaining Enron "sold all its domestic exploration and production assets about two years ago to EOG Reources" and probably did not retain records regarding that well. As for the possibility Spectrum 7 invested in other Enron ventures, she notes, "You're referencing something that happened in 1986. I can check, but we're pretty short-staffed now." Elizabeth Ivers, a spokeswoman for EOG Resources (formerly Enron Oil and Gas), says, "If we did have any records on that well, it would be nothing that we would share with the public. We do not disclose the details or specifics of who we have well interests with."

CONTINUED...

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?bid=3&pid=21

For those with money, time flies.

May we see them do time for fraud, corruption, warmongering and every other treason they have committed in office and out.

[FreakinDJ]

6. Isn't he McSame's economic advisor?

sounds like round 2 of the enron energy crisis

[Octafish]

10. McCain's Gramm YOYO Problem

Socialism for the well-off. "You're On Your Own" for the rest of us:

McCain’s Gramm Problem]

Our guest blogger is Jared Bernstein, the Director of the Living Standards program at the Economic Policy Institute and author of the book "Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed?"

John McCain spent the day doing something you’d rather not do when you’re running for president in the midst of an economic downturn: trying hard to distance himself from his top economic advisor, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm.

McCain had no choice. In one of a series of deeply dissonant gaffes from the McCain squad this week, Gramm argued that the only recession out there was in people’s heads (“this is a mental recession”) and that everyone should just stop whining. We’ve lost jobs for six months in a row (down over 400,000), paychecks are getting whacked by rising unemployment and soaring gas prices, the federal government is contemplating a takeover of Fannie and Freddie, as financial markets carve out new lows everyday, and this guy — not just any guy, but the top economist for the Republican candidate for president — tells us it’s all in our heads.

The thing is, I find all of this quite reassuring. I know Phil Gramm is a huge economic danger zone, so when he reveals his true colors to the point where McCain has to disavow him, it’s a good day. What scares me is when he’s quiet. It’s in the dead of night, under the cover of deregulatory darkness, where Gramm has successfully struck his most damaging blows.

Driven by that lethal combination of ideological market fundamentalism, or, if you prefer, YOYO economics (“you’re on your own), and the desire to help rich friends in the banking industry, Gramm crafted legislation that helped get us where we are today. Most notably, in 1999, he sponsored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which essentially took down the regulatory walls between commercial and non-commercial lenders (the latter being investment banks like Bear Stearns or mortgage brokers like Countrywide, to pull a few names out of the air).

Before that, most lending was from commercial banks, subject to Federal Reserve oversight and a variety of common sense rules regarding capital reserve ratios and underwriting standards. Now, most lending is from non-commercial entities, which would not necessarily be a problem if they were subject to similar oversight.

CONTINUED...

http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/07/12/bernstein-on-gramm/

Is it any wonder why Corporate McPravda won't cover this story?

[seemslikeadream]

7. One he sprung from jail?

[Octafish]

12. The strange and convenient death of J. Clifford Baxter

From Mother Jones and Will Saletan:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/1995/07/saletan2.html

They thrived. Some died. What's the differnce? For one, Baxter was going to talk...

Yes. Another one. Just like the other one. Remember Cliff BAXTER?

The strange and convenient death of J. Clifford Baxter—Enron executive found shot to death

By Patrick Martin
28 January 2002
World Socialist Web Site

Without anything that can be called a serious investigation, local authorities in a wealthy Houston suburb have whitewashed the death of former Enron vice chairman J. Clifford Baxter, calling it a suicide. Baxter, 43, was found shot to death in his Mercedes Benz in the early hours of Friday morning, January 25, near his home in Sugar Land.

Baxter’s body was discovered inside his Mercedes Benz, which was parked in a turnaround on a street near his home. Officials in Sugar Land moved swiftly to label Baxter’s death a suicide. Local Justice of the Peace Jim Richard initially declared that Baxter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and no further inquiry was required. But within hours he reversed himself, citing the intense public interest in the death, and ordered an autopsy.

Harris County Medical Examiner Joye Carter conducted the autopsy and found the cause of death to be suicide by a “penetrating gunshot to the head.” The weapon was a .38 caliber revolver which was found in Baxter’s car, next to his body.

Neither the perfunctory official probe nor the media coverage has addressed the obvious suspicions aroused by the death of a critically important witness in the investigation into the criminal activities at Enron, the biggest corporate fraud in American history. Baxter quit as vice chairman of the company last May, after reportedly come into conflict with other top executives over the phony accounting gimmicks used to plunder billions of dollars.

The most disturbing account of Baxter’s last days comes from a former business associate who spoke to the New York Times but was not identified by the newspaper. This person spoke with the former Enron vice chairman two days before his death and congratulated him “for being named among those people who complained about Enron.”

According to the Times account, the unnamed associate added that Baxter “was talking about perhaps needing a bodyguard, though I’m not sure where that idea came from.”

That a man only two days away from suicide would be considering hiring a bodyguard defies belief. But neither the Times nor any other media outlet has raised the possibility that Baxter felt his life to be in danger because of what he knew and could divulge about the internal affairs of Enron. Men have been killed for much less.

Baxter was named in a memorandum submitted by Enron Vice President Sheron Watkins last August to Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay. Watkins warned Lay that dubious off-the-books transactions with private partnerships set up by top Enron officials might cause the company to “collapse in a welter of accounting scandals.” She cited Baxter’s opposition to one of these partnerships, set up by then-CEO Jeffrey Skilling, writing, “Cliff Baxter complained mightily to Skilling and all who would listen about the inappropriateness of our transactions with LJM.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jan2002/enro-j28.shtml

BFEE SOP: Dead men tell no tales.

[Octafish]

19. Gramm to work for Swiss bank - UBS Warburg took over much of Enron operation

Separating people from their money and moving it offshore is their speciality:

Gramm to work for Swiss bank

UBS Warburg took over much of Enron operation

By KAREN MASTERSON
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Phil Gramm, one of the banking industry's closest allies on Capitol Hill, has accepted a job with Switzerland's largest bank.

The Texas Republican announced Monday that when he retires from the Senate later this year he'll become vice chairman of UBS Warburg, the investment banking arm of UBS AG that acquired a major piece of Enron earlier this year after the Houston-based energy giant fell apart.

Gramm will cap 24 years in Congress with a plum job in an industry that has been among his largest campaign contributors.

Without revealing his salary -- other than to say it'll be more than the $150,000 he made this year as a senator -- Gramm said the job will require him to split his time between midtown Manhattan, Washington and various places around the world.

"I am as excited about becoming an investment banker as I was the day I got my Ph.D. or the day that I was first elected to Congress," he said Monday. Before winning a House seat in 1978, Gramm taught economics at Texas A&M University.

The 60-year-old fiscal conservative told reporters that going to work for the banking industry posed no impropriety because the policies he pushed as the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee were meant to improve the financial markets, not benefit any one corporation.

"It will provide me the opportunity to practice what I have always preached," said Gramm, who opposes the imposition of federal regulations on free market forces.

UBS spokeswoman Christine Walton said it's unclear whether Gramm will lobby for the corporation next year, once the one-year federal lobbying ban expires.

"The whole reason for his coming to UBS is not because of who he knows, but what he knows," Walton said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/business/1607686

Sure. It's what he knows.



He and McMadman know Switzerland is beautiful this time of year...

[mod mom]

9. Thank you O for that flashback to Wendy Gramm's connection to BCCI. What a tight web these

spiders have spun. :mad:

rec'd-I always learn so much from your posts!

[Octafish]

13. Enron VP tells Congress she feared for her life - But media remains silent on Baxter ''suicide''

It's like a flashback to a less-sad time.

Enron VP tells Congress she feared for her life
But media remains silent on Baxter "suicide"

By Patrick Martin
22 February 2002
World Socialist Web Site

EXCERPT...

But this attempt to whitewash Lay is contradicted by Watkins’ overall testimony, which describes a company in which many top-level employees were aware of and troubled by the deals Fastow effectively contracted with himself. He was both Enron CFO and principal organizer of the private partnerships. Watkins said she feared that speaking out about these transactions would be a “job-terminating move,” and only sent her memo to Lay after Skilling abruptly quit the company and a shake-up was clearly in the works.

At an earlier session of the House committee, Enron board member William Powers, dean of the University of Texas Law School, revealed that Baxter had given “a couple of hours” of interviews to the investigative committee set up by the board in the aftermath of the financial collapse. Powers refused to turn over notes or recordings of those interviews without permission from Enron.

Watkins’ account is quite different from the version told by Skilling under oath at a congressional hearing a week earlier, in which he described himself as only vaguely aware of the financial operations carried out by Fastow. Watkins said of Skilling, “He is a very much intense, hands-on manager. He was involved in Mr. Fastow’s endeavors. I find it very hard to believe that he was not fully aware of transactions with Mr. Fastow’s partnerships.”

While she refused to discuss Baxter’s death, claiming to be overcome by emotion, Watkins’ description of Baxter implicitly refutes Skilling’s portrait of a despairing man. Skilling, who described Baxter as “my closest friend,” said he had a long discussion with him only a week before his death, in which the former vice chairman was visibly distraught and felt his reputation had been ruined by the Enron collapse.

Baxter’s Houston lawyer, J.C. Nickens, who spoke with him frequently in the weeks before his death, has denied that Baxter was troubled either by the prospect of testifying before Congress or the danger of being held criminally liable in the Enron collapse. Baxter, according to his lawyer, feared neither eventuality because of his record of having criticized the practices that destroyed the company’s financial standing.

In a press interview February 9, Nickens described Baxter as agitated over harassment. “Cliff expressed to me his belief that people were going through his mail, that they were going through his garbage, that people were showing up at his home late at night, and making phone calls that were unwelcome.”

Nickens was not clear as to the source of this harassment—whether the press, prosecutors, or other Enron executives. But he did say that he had no sense that Baxter would take his own life. In the hours before Baxter’s death, Nickens had begun negotiating with congressional investigators on the conditions under which his client would appear in Washington to testify about the Enron collapse.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/feb2002/enro-f22.shtml

Thank you for the kind words, mod mom. You caring means the world to me.

[burythehatchet]

11. Seriously? I am ready to eat the rich. (the ones who did it this way)

[Octafish]

14. ENRON Who's Who from BBC -- Karl Rove

Karl Rove

Current job: Chief political advisor to President Bush

Link to Enron: Mr Rove was one of the biggest holders of Enron stock among White House staffers, with between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of shares when he was appointed. He was required to sell them when the Bush administration took office.

The White House has acknowledged that Mr Rove took part in meetings that helped shape the Bush government’s energy policy, while he still held Enron shares and stock in other energy companies – though the administration denies that the meetings were specific enough to raise conflict-of-interest of interest.

Mr Rove also recommended the Republican strategist Ralph Reed (former executive director of the Christian Coalition) to Enron for a consulting contract as Mr Bush was considering whether to run for president.

Both the White House and Enron deny that this was a deal to secure Mr Reed’s backing, but critics allege the move was intended to keep Mr Reed loyal to the Bush campaign without putting him on the Bush payroll.

Critics say Mr Rove’s involvement in Mr Reed's hiring underscores the close association between Enron and the Bush inner circle.

SOURCE:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/business/2002/enron/20.stm

Get the salt and pepper.

[G_j]

15. Speaking of....'Foreclosure Phil'

www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/90937/

'Foreclosure Phil' Gramm: How John McCain's Closest Economic Advisor Helped Engineer the Morgage Crisis

Posted by Democracy Now!, Democracy Now! at 12:37 PM on July 9, 2008.

Journalists Nomi Prins and David Corn discuss the housing crisis and its link to the lobbyist writing McCain's economic policy.

In the latest issue of Mother Jones magazine, David Corn writes, "Who’s to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters."

AMY GOODMAN: The worst of the economic crisis may be far from over. That was the message of Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke Tuesday. He indicated the housing and financial turmoil will persist deep into next year.

The Senate, meanwhile, is deliberating a bill this week that would provide government-backed loans to 400,000 homeowners on the brink of foreclosure. The housing bill has faced some resistance from Republican lawmakers and was also threatened with a White House veto but is expected to pass the Senate.

But with skyrocketing foreclosure rates, critics say the measure is expected to only help a small percentage of the estimated three million homeowners threatened with foreclosure. The Washington Post also reported last month the bill’s key provisions were suggested to Congress by lobbyists for major banks like Credit Suisse and Bank of America, banks that are facing huge losses from the subprime mortgage crisis. The nation’s top housing official, Steve Preston, warned Tuesday that the legislation could overwhelm the Federal Housing Administration with risky loans.

To discuss the state of the economy, I’m joined now by two guests. Nomi Prins is a former investment banker turned journalist. She used to run the European analytics group at Bear Stearns, now a senior fellow at Demos. She is the author of two books: Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America and Jacked: How Conservatives Are Picking Your Pocket. Nomi Prins is here in the firehouse studio. We’re also joined on the phone from Washington, D.C. by David Corn, D.C. bureau chief of Mother Jones. His article in the latest issue of the magazine is called “Foreclosure Phil,” and we’ll find out who that is in just one second.


..more..

[Octafish]

16. The Subprime Mess and Phil Gramm: An Experiment in Deregulation

Thank you for the heads-up on Mother Jones and David Corn, G_j! You always add to what we know about these gangsters.

The Subprime Mess and Phil Gramm: An Experiment in Deregulation

Paul Kiesel
InjuryBoard.com
June 24, 2008 - 04:12 PM

In 1933, a few years following the stock market crash, Congress passes the Glass-Steagall Act, in hopes that regulating banks will help prevent market instability, particularly amongst Wall Street banks. The purpose of the act is to separate commercial banks that focus on consumers from investment banks, which deal with speculative trading and mergers.

The Glass-Steagall Act provided the proper oversight and entity separation that would prohibit banks and other financial companies from merging into giant trusts (conflict of interests) -- giant trusts or corporations being more powerful, naturally, and having the seemingly limitless capital to lobby their corporate interests, however, with a very myopic scope (particularly when it comes to factoring in potential losses -- most banks, as seen in contemporary times, chose not to anticipate losses in the mortgage market; they presumed home prices would continue to appreciate).

In 1999, former Senator Phil Gramm (who is, incidentally, Senator John McCain's economic adviser and cochairs his presidential campaign) set out to completely gut the Glass-Steagall Act, and did so successfully, replacing most of its components with the new Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act: allowing commercial banks, investment banks, and insurers to merge (which would have violated antitrust laws under Glass-Steagall). Sen. Gramm was the driving force behind the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, as he had received over $4.6 million from the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate donations) over the previous decade, and once the Act passed, an influx of "megamergers" took place among banks and insurance and securities companies, as if they had been eagerly awaiting the passage of Gramm's Act. Everything in between Glass-Steagall and Gramm-Leach-Bliley (i.e. Savings and Loan crisis/bust) was, in large part, the incubation period for what would take place over the nine years that would follow the passage of Gramm's Act: an experiment in deregulation.

Shortly after George W. Bush was elected president, Congress and President Clinton were trying to pass a $384 billion omnibus spending bill, and while the debates swirled around the passage of this bill, Senator Phil Gramm clandestinely slipped a 262-page amendment into the omnibus appropriations bill titled: Commodity Futures Modernization Act. It is likely that few senators read this bill, if any. The essence of the act was the deregulation of derivatives trading (financial instruments whose value changes in response to the changes in underlying variables; the main use of derivatives is to reduce risk for one party). The legislation contained a provision -- lobbied for by Enron, a major campaign contributor to Gramm -- that exempted energy trading from regulatory oversight. Basically, it gave way to the Enron debacle and ushered in the new era of unregulated securities. Interestingly enough, Gramm's wife, Wendy, had been part of the Enron board, and her salary and stock income brought in between $900,000 and $1.8 million to the Gramm household, prior to the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

In 2003, Gramm left the Senate to join UBS, which had acquired investment house PaineWebber due to his deregulation bill. At UBS, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Fed and the Treasury Department. During Gramm's tenor at UBS and as a lobbyist, Congress passed the Responsible Lending Act, billed as an anti-predatory-lending measure, but was called the "Loan Shark Protection Act" by consumer advocates, as it was designed to preempt stronger state laws against anti-predatory lending. The Fed largely ignored the underlying and growing problems within the subprime mortgage/housing markets, as Bernanke famously acknowledged the housing market in April, 2007 as, " signs of softening," but said that a "sharp slowdown," is unlikely. Then, according to Mother Jones magazine, Henry Paulson became the Treasury Secretary in July, 2007, when, "In 2005, Goldman securitized $68 billion in residential mortgages and $23 billion in 'other assets' primarily related to CDOs," (Mother Jones, August, 2008). With such self-interest, and a lack of the nation's interest, we can see how this subprime mess was allowed to escalate to such great proportions.

Some justice was served, however, this spring, as UBS became one of the subprime debacle's biggest losers, having to write down $37 billion -- the same amount as their previous four years of profits combined. UBS also made the public aware that two-thirds of its losses were due to reckless investing in collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).

CONTINUED...

http://losangeles.injuryboard.com/miscellaneous/the-subprime-mess-and-phil-gramm-an-experiment-in-deregulation.aspx?googleid=242468

Knowing what these so-and-sos are up to is the first step needed in bringing them before Justice.

[G_j]

24. the guy is like, a key architect of economic collapse

stranger than fiction, I suppose..
:shrug:

[Octafish]

57. ''De-Regulation'' is how they emptied the S&Ls.

As far as the killers are concerned...

Interesting passage in Pete Brewton's The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (1992)

By John Simkin
The Education Forum

EXCERPT...

On July 29, 1986, North had a meeting with retired Air Force Major General Richard Secord, who was running the Contra resupply effort as well as handling arms shipments to Iran. They discussed Ron Martin and Sergio Brull, along with Miami gun dealer David Duncan and the use of an East German ship that Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was holding.

Brull was also named by Secord in an interview he had with the FBI in July 1986. Secord said Brull was an associate of Jack Terrell, who had been involved in efforts to resupply the Contras.

In 1989, Brull was sued by a bank in Haiti for allegedly absconding with the proceeds of a $1.4 million letter of credit that was to buy 5,000 tons of Brazilian sugar for Haiti. The bank couldn't locate Brull to serve him with the lawsuit and alleged that he had fled the country. The bank was able to track the $1.4 million that Brull took to a bank in Madrid, Spain."

Another member of this circle who was in Belize around this time was Carl Jenkins, an old CIA agent whose previous claim to fame was his role as Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero's case officer during the Bay of Pigs fiasco." (Quintero, an infamous CIA operative who worked with Thomas Clines and Edwin Wilson, among others, was brought in by Secord and Clines to help with the Contra resupply effort.)" Jenkins is mentioned in a number of places in North's notebooks, including one memorable list by North that reads "Gene Wheaton, Carl Jenkins, Hull, Owen, North." This list was compiled by North on April 18, 1986, apparently during a telephone conversation with Alan Fiers, director of the CIA's Central American Task Force, who would later plead guilty to misleading Congress on the Contra affair.

Almost every time Jenkins appears in North's notebooks, he is in the company of Wheaton, the former Pentagon criminal investigator. Wheaton said Jenkins was using the tiny nation of Belize as a training area for Latin Americans and Laotians to fight in Nicaragua against the Sandinistas.
One of Jenkins's first assignments with the CIA was in the 1954 coup in Guatemala. Jenkins and his helicopter company in Guatemala were also customers of Commercial Helicopters in Baton Rouge, Louisiana." (This company got most of its financing from Louisiana mobster and savings-and-loan looter Herman K. Beebe, and one of its principals was a close friend of drug dealer and CIA asset Barry Seal. More on this later.)
On January 11, 1984, the day after North had scheduled a meeting with S. Cass Weiland and Senator Roth regarding Belize, North got another phone call from George Woodworth. He wrote in his notebook that it was about Weiland, who "wants to contact people in Belize camps." The word that is illegible appears to be a four-letter word that begins with "dr" and ends with a "g." However, it doesn't appear to be the word "drug."

About the same time that Jenkins was training anti-Sandinistas in Belize and Corson's future attorney was saying the White House was interested in moving on a project in Belize, a friend of George Bush's, and Ronald Reagan's biggest campaign fundraiser in 1980 - i.e., Walter Mischer - was getting involved in small English-speaking Belize. He started out in 1984 in a shrimp business with his close friend, the late Houston developer Keith Jackson...

Ross, while denying that the company ever did business with his childhood buddy, Barry Seal, or the CIA, volunteered: "We used to lease helicopters from Flying Tiger Airlines." This airline company was established by General Claire Chennault in the 1950s as a cargo company, and became one of the largest private cargo companies in the world. It was not a CIA proprietary, but it did work for the CIA. It took its name from the group of pilots organized by Chennault during World War II to fly supplies to Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist Chinese. This group formed the foundation for the CIA's proprietary airline, Civil Air Transport, a branch of which became the infamous Air America.

Commercial Helicopters also negotiated the sale of helicopters to Saudi Arabia for use as medical ambulances, and provided parts and services to a helicopter company in Guatemala. This company, Helicopteros de Guatemala, was run by Wheaton's buddy Carl Jenkins, the old CIA agent from Louisiana who was living in Guatemala and training Contras in Belize. At the time Commercial Helicopters filed for bankruptcy, it was holding for repair about $150,000 worth of helicopter parts belonging to Jenkins's company.

A letter filed with the bankruptcy court on April 11,1985, from Gary Villiard, the general manager of Commercial Helicopters, states that on May 30, 1984, Jenkins and Ricardo Moratoya from Helicopteros de Guatemala instructed him to transport a helicopter owned by the company from New Orleans to Commercial Helicopters' facilities in Lafayette, and then to ship it to Guatemala along with an engine belonging to them. Villiard said in the letter that he complied.

Jenkins had other connections to the Ed Wilson/Tom Clines/Ted Shackley/Dick Secord group. As previously noted, he was Chi Chi Quintero's CIA case officer during the Bay of Pigs, after which Tom Clines became Quintero's case officer. (Shackley was Clines's boss and headed up the CIA's Miami station after the Bay of Pigs disaster; he was also involved in the CIA's use of the Mafia to try to assassinate Fidel Castro.)

Jenkins also headed a large CIA base in Laos from 1970 to 1973, during which time Shackley, Secord and Clines were all involved in CIA operations in that area. Also working with these individuals in that theater were General John Singlaub and a Marine officer named Oliver North.

SOURCE: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7587

If "money trumps peace," then it must be to Bushco that "trillions are worth killing millions" over. Who or what can stand in the way of such combined economic, political and military power? More than one President in my lifetime have tried. We the People must.

[leftchick]

17. It never ceases to amaze me how stupid most amerikans are....

I mean get the fuck out of town! If that group shot does not say "Fuckin eat cake" I don't know what does!

:eyes:

K&R!

[Octafish]

18. McCain said selling cigarettes to Iran may be ''a way of killing 'em.''

Cake is too good for them.



Senator McCain and wife Cindy. Photo: AP

McCain sends Iran a smoke bomb

Pittsburgh
July 10, 2008

JOHN McCain, who once sang in jest about bombing Iran, has reacted to a report of rising US cigarette exports to the Islamic republic by saying it may be "a way of killing 'em".

While Senator McCain waited for a cheese steak at Pittsburgh restaurant Primanti Brothers, famous for its thick sandwiches piled high not only with meat but french fries, a reporter on Tuesday asked him to comment on the report that US exports to Iran had increased tenfold in the past seven years — with cigarettes ranking as the top export.

"Maybe that's a way of killing 'em," Senator McCain said. His wife, Cindy, sitting next to him, poked him in the back, and he added: "I meant that as a joke, as a person who hasn't had a cigarette in 28 years."

CONTINUED...

http://www.theage.com.au/world/mccain-sends-iran-a-smoke-bomb-20080709-3ck2.html

This disturbed fellow is the best the GOP has to offer.

[whistle]

29. McCain is just another lunatic neocon, pass it on

[Riddler]

20. Instead of helping another corrupt piece of shit get elected, scum like the Gramms should be

in prison. Oh wait! They're Republicans so it's ok to be vile, corrupt, unethical, lying, scum-bag thieves.

[Octafish]

22. Gramm pushed 'the most macabre investment scheme ever devised by Wall Street' - 'death bonds'

Evil is one of their middle names.

McCain Advisor/Lobbyist Pushed “the most macabre investment scheme(s) ever devised by Wall Street” known as “death bonds”

By: Cliff Schecter Tuesday June 3, 2008 7:17 am 0

A cheery guy, that Phil Gramm. According to Newsweek, he brought his zest for life into his work as a banking industry lobbyist, and no, we're not just talking about the subprime mess and tax evasion he and UBS pioneered. From Newsweek, via Progress Ohio:

McCain's campaign is already distancing itself from some of Gramm's other work for UBS: his involvement in attempts to sell financial products known as "death bonds," which BusinessWeek described last summer as one of "the most macabre investment scheme(s) ever devised by Wall Street." Not long after joining UBS, the Houston Chronicle reported, Gramm helped lobby Texas officials, including Gov. Rick Perry, to sign on to a UBS proposal in which revenue would be generated for a state teachers' retirement fund by selling bonds, whose proceeds would in turn be used to buy annuities and life-insurance policies on retired teachers. UBS would advance money to the retirement fund, then repay itself, compensate bondholders and pocket profits when insurance companies paid off on retirees who died. According to a banking-industry source, who asked for anonymity when discussing a sensitive matter, Gramm was involved in efforts to pitch similar UBS products to other financial institutions.

Gramm's office declined NEWSWEEK's request for comment. A source familiar with the bank's current business, who also asked for anonymity, said UBS no longer markets the kind of plan that Gramm was allegedly trying to sell to Texas. Hazelbaker said that McCain, who has been critical of the financial industry's performance in the subprime market, disapproves of death bonds and "supports increased accountability, transparency and capital backing in our financial markets as a solution to these problems." Death bonds, she continued, "move markets away —not toward—these goals."


CONTINUED...

http://cliffschecter.firedoglake.com/2008/06/03/mccain-advisorlobbyist-pushed-the-most-macabre-investment-schemes-ever-devised-by-wall-street-known-as-death-bonds/

And these warmongering NAZI greedheads are traitors.

[elehhhhna]

35. It's called "dead peasant" insurance. IIRC, Walmart got in big trouble for holding

dead peasant policies on their employees

[Pastiche423]

21. I've been waiting for someone to bring up the skinny

on Phil and Wendy.

You do it best, Octafish!

Thanks!

[Octafish]

23. Enron: ultimate agent of the American empire

Thanks for the kind words, Pastiche423! Others have done the heavy lifting...like Mr. Larry Chin:

Enron: ultimate agent of the American empire

by Larry Chin
February 2002
Online Journal


Contents

* Cold Warriors in suits

* Extorting and racketeering in America

* The looting of Harvard

* Enron's past overseas adventures: collusion and exploitation

* Enron, the Bush administration, and the Central Asian war

* Enron, Halliburton, Bush and bin Laden

* The cover-up that no one is talking about

In portraying Enron as a "scandal", and as an isolated case of
overheated capitalism and "unusual political influence", the
mainstream American corporate media and congressional
investigators have studiously hidden the truth: Enron, like many
multinational corporations, has long functioned as an operational
arm of the US government, the ruling financial elite and as a
weapon of economic, political, and territorial hegemony.

The Enron scandal, arguably the biggest financial and political
crime in modern history, exposes a terminal malignancy at the heart
of world politics, and global capitalism itself.


Cold Warriors in suits

In a "free market world" in which (1) the goals of the state,
corporations, world financial bodies (World Trade Organization,
World Bank and IMF) and the national security apparatus
(intelligence agencies and military) are indistinguishable, (2)
these groups plan and conduct operations cooperatively, and (3)
government and business elites (linked by longtime social ties)
move seamlessly between public and private sectors, the hydra that
is Enron is nightmarishly uncontroversial --- and quintessentially
American.

Consider the company's leadership:

* Enron CEO Kenneth Lay was a Pentagon official during the
Vietnam War, and a friend of the Bush family for decades.

* Frank Wisner Jr., a board member of the subsidiary Enron Oil
& Gas, has intimate CIA ties, and is the son of former CIA
deputy Director Frank Wisner Sr., who was present at the
creation of the CIA.

* Board member and finance committee chairman Herbert "Pug"
Winokur is a long-time Washington and Wall Street insider,
intimately tied to military and intelligence communities.
Winokur is the CEO of the private Capricorn Holdings.
Capricorn is the lead investor of DynCorp. He was the
chairman of DynCorp's board of from 1987 to 1997, and remains
a DynCorp board member and chair of its compensation
committee. Winokur's Capricorn Holdings was used as an
investment vehicle in NHP, which from 1987 to 1997 was linked
to massive HUD housing fraud and money laundering.

Enron's symbiotic relationship to the CIA/Pentagon-based
Bush/Cheney oligarchy is well documented. As a pioneer of energy
deregulation during his administration, George H.W. Bush virtually
created Enron, and paved the way for its meteoric growth. And, as
David Walsh wrote, "to speak of `connections' or `intimate ties'
between Enron and the Bush regime nearly misses the point. To a
large extent, the present administration is an extension of the
Enron board of directors".

CONTINUED...

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/ultAgent.txt

Those who are connected to the Empire do all right. And the closer they are to the Emperor, the better.

What about us? We the People remember and write down who's who and what's what. That will make the prosecution thorough.

[AntiFascist]

25. K&R...

but I would say that Enron has very little to do with healthy capitalism and everything to do with fascism.

[Octafish]

31. Phil Gramm, Hero of Deregulation

Let them eat crumbs.

Phil Gramm, Hero of Deregulation

Matthew Yglesias
29 Mar 2008 12:04 pm

A nice piece by Lisa Lerer in Politico makes the point that Phil Gramm, on whom John McCain says he'll be relying for economic policy advice, was one of the key architects of a piece of deregulation that's been a big contributor to the current crisis in the financial markets. Indeed, Gramm was, in general, one of the most hard-core far-right voices on economic policy all during his tenure in the congress. McCain, who neither knows nor cares about economic policy, decided during the primaries that he should tack to the far right by outsourcing his thinking to the Gramms of the world and based on the evidence thus far from his reaction to the crisis (roughly speaking: let them eat cake) he hasn't reconsidered that idea.

After all, to reconsider it he'd need to care about the issue, have some inclination to think about policy questions, and believe that public policy should benefit ordinary people and none of those things are true.

SOURCE w interesting responses:
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/phil_gramm_hero_of_deregulatio.php

This is a corporation, not a democracy.

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

26. Addington has to be tied to Enron.

Enron et Addington/Cheney is where the Nation started it's fall. Energy Task Force, my ass. It's gone to Hell since.

[Octafish]

42. Addington the Gatekeeper.

The minutes to Sneer's secret ENRON Energy Task Force meetings would show, IMFO, a clear design on Iraq's then-nationalized oil fields.

Enron in 6 energy policy meetings

Cheney's counsel: Firm's finances weren't discussed

By William L. Watts
CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last update: 5:55 p.m. EST Jan. 8, 2002

WASHINGTON CBS MW -- Enron representatives met six times last year to discuss energy policy with Vice President Dick Cheney or members of his energy task force, a White House attorney told a Democratic lawmaker.

Cheney met only once with Ken Lay, chief executive of the collapsed energy giant, on April 17 to discuss energy policy matters, David Addington, counsel to the vice president, wrote in a letter dated Jan. 4.

SNIP...

Enron (ENE) and task force officials discussed only policy matters and never talked about the company's financial position, according to Addington.

SNIP...

Waxman, in a letter to Cheney, responded that the information provided by Addington shows that "access provided to Enron far exceeded the access provided by the White House to other parties interested in energy policy."

SNIP...

Addington said the Enron meetings weren't out of the ordinary.

"The group's support staff held such meetings with a broad representation of people potentially affected by the group's work," he wrote.

CONTINUED...

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BE2B7418B-8559-455A-AA33-B9A6BB5B8D5F%7D

Thanks for the excellent reminder, OnceUponTimeOnTheNet. These warmongers are busted.

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

44. Kicking your reply as I don't have Addington around the house here to kick.

My God, how I want to beat that son of a bitch, into the bloody memory of the pulp he will be.

[Octafish]

45. Remind me to introduce you to DUer Mitchum.

Either one of you would make an excellent Attorney General of the United States.

[Karenina]

27. Phil Gramm's Greatest Hits!

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/11/phil-gramm-greatest-hits/

[Octafish]

28. HUGE: Phil Gramm Ties to High Gas Prices

Thank you, Karenina! The guy's a regular one-note wonder!

HUGE: Phil Gramm Ties to High Gas Prices

by arquebus
Wed May 28, 2008 at 02:47:40 PM PDT

We've all heard by now the links that McCain economic advisor and former Senator Phil Gramm has to the subprime mortgage crisis. In essence, he was a lobbyist for UBS, which worked to deregulate the housing market, which in turn led to the current real estate fiasco. I'm not going to link to the stories; they're essentially common knowledge `round these parts. If you're in the dark on this issue, go see Olbermann's take fraom last night.

However, we now have documented evidence linking Gramm not only to the subprime crisis, but to the massive increase in oil futures trading, and thus the rapid increase in the price of gasoline. Thus, perhaps MAIN economic advisor is linked in no uncertain terms to BOTH causes of the current economic situation in the U.S. I submit that, in a reasonable world, this would sink McCain's campaign, particularly given his oft-quoted remarks about knowing nothing about the economy. If Phil Gramm is the guy he listens to, now we know WHY he's clueless regarding economics.

arquebus's diary :: ::

Here's the deal. Point the First: futures trading is one cause of the current spike in oil prices. That's not me talking, that's the United States House of Representatives, which made the declaration while still in Republican hands:

"There’s a few hedge fund managers out there who are masters at knowing how to exploit the peak theories and hot buttons of supply and demand and by making bold predictions of shocking price advancements to come, they only add more fuel to the bullish fire in a sort of self fulfilling prophecy." — National Gas Week, September 5, 2005 as reprinted in the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’ report, "The Role of Market Speculation in Rising Oil and Gas Prices," June 27, 2006

We ok so far? The REPUBLICAN House is on record blaming, at least in part, futures trading for high gas prices. This view is supported by the evidence. Diarist Dr Observer quotes a recent Ft. Worth Star-Telegram article thusly:

Does it surprise you to discover that the US Senate investigated the rigging of the oil market by speculators in the summer of 2006 – and concluded that there was no supply and demand problem with oil? Did you know that their conclusion was that speculators were responsible for a 70 percent overcharge in the price of oil in the months leading up to the summer of 2006?

This from page 1 of the Executive Summary of that Senate investigation, there is this one troubling line: "Today, U.S. oil inventories are at an eight-year high, and OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) oil inventories are at a 20-year high."

That’s odd because, in 2006, just like today, the media reporting covered the serious international shortage of oil and justified oil’s high price. Even more troubling is that the House of Representatives held a hearing this past December, ominously titled "Energy Speculation and Price Manipulation."

CONTINUED...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/28/17835/8414/407/524367

These oil baron-cockroaches are discovering there really isn't a rock big enough for them to crawl under.



I am so glad.

[lonestarnot]

30. Drill drill drill.

Someone got already to Phil Grahamcracker's head. :)

[Octafish]

39. The Enron Model: A Preamble for the Constitution of the Corporations of the USA

Even though he's slow and stupid, he's got plent of people who owe him favors.

It's a good bet he actually despises the crazy monkey because at one time in 2000, he thought the job was his.

Come to think of it, things could be worse.

The Enron Model:
A Preamble for the Constitution of the Corporations of the USA

By Tom Turnipseed
CounterPunch
January 18, 2002

We the corporations of The United States, in order to make more money, establish our profits with campaign contributions and lobbying, insure a revolving door of greedy executives, provide pink slips for our employees and steal their retirement, promote theft from our shareholders, and secure the hatred of the people of the world through economic exploitation, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Corporations of the United States.

Corporate power and its control of government and information in the United States is transforming our great experiment in democracy as expressed in the Preamble to the United States into a mockery of the meaning of "We the people...". The Enron collapse exemplifies how corporate America conspires to change and circumvent laws and regulations meant to protect everyday people. Most Americans are not greedy or ruthless enough to be anywhere near the "discreet" decision making process of Enron executives like "Kenny Boy" Lay, whose bold and imaginative acquisitiveness gave him access to the corporate titans of the world and their political minions in Congress and the White House.

George Will recently wrote, "...a mature capitalist economy is a government project." Will, a high brow "conservative," strained to impress intellectuals with a demeaning description of Washington as "narcissistic and solipsistic" in his column about Enron. For a wealthy corporate elite apologist in a country that has seen the greatest increase in income disparity in its history over the past 20 years to admit that the bad ol' government is really a tool of his beloved capitalism is interesting. Will went on to say, "A properly functioning free market system does not spring spontaneously from society's soil as dandelions spring from surburban lawns. Rather, it is a complex creation of laws and mores that guarantee...transparency, meaning a sufficient stream...of reliable information about the condition and conduct of corporations." Mr. Will did not tell us how our "mature capitalist economy" can remedy the errors of Enron when the largest corporations successfully use campaign contributions and lobbying against laws and regulations, put their lackeys in charge of the regulatory agencies that would guarantee such transparency, and control the major media and the information "We the people..." receive.

General Electric, like Enron, has been lauded as an excellent example of an American corporation and they also happen to own NBC, CNBC and half of MSNBC. GE is a big defense contractor and their media subsidiaries have led the hype of America's New War 24-7 since 911 along with other major media, but now they are finally covering the collapse of Enron. Enron's collapse hit so close to the corrupt core of our corporate culture that their talking heads are demanding jail time for Enron executives, distancing themselves from the corporate "evil ones." Enron had an esteemed CEO known to President Bush as "Kenny Boy" Lay, who "cashed out" on his employees, and GE's honored former CEO, "Neutron Jack" Welch earned his nickname for putting profits over people by firing thousands of employees and making GE a "model of corporate efficiency" when he took over as CEO of General Electric.

SNIP...

Harvey Pitt, an attorney for Arthur Andersen and defender of the controversial practice of an accounting firm being allowed to do unlimited consulting services for a client for whom they were auditors, was appointed by Bush as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Auditing and consulting has been cited as a contributing cause for the Enron/Andersen debacle. Former SEC chairmen Arthur Levitt proposed legislation in 2000 that would have forced accounting firms like Arthur Andersen to choose whether they would provide auditing or consulting services to clients, but not both. The proposal that might have helped prevent the Enron/Andersen fiasco was defeated by the powerful and outspoken opposition of Senator Charles Schumer, who received $329,631 from the accounting industry (1995-2000), Senator Phil Gramm, who received $200,950 from the accounting lobby (1995-2000) and congressman Billy Tauzin, who received $143,424 from the accounting industry (1995-2000).

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/tomenron2.html

Thank you for giving a damn, lonestarnot. Spreading the word on these turds is making a big difference.

[lonestarnot]

55. It's my second job!

:hug:

[izquierdista]

32. Phil Gramm with an English accent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3LJYO3r1xw&feature=related

[Octafish]

43. Exactly. Here's the story of the upper classes...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSqkdcT25ss

[Rex]

33. I'm not sure who is more worthless, Newt or Phil?

They both deserve their place in hell.

[Octafish]

46. Don't forget Rush.

Their station will be a very firey.

Of the three, Newt gets credit.

The BFEE bought Rush the mic.

Phil's their banker, like Meyer Lansky.

[Rex]

58. Mr. Contract on America. Armed Forces Pigboy and Not My Mama!

Oh believe me, I didn't forget Rove. I just don't think he deserves any credit for being worthless. He rates below worthless, whatever the word for that is.

[Norrin Radd]

34. kr

[Octafish]

47. Why BCCI still matters: Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan - The Father of the Islamic Bomb

Thanks, Progs Rock!



Here's the BCCI Thing:

Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan - The Father of the Islamic Bomb

The Risk Report
Volume 1 Number 6 (July-August 1995) Page 5

Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan is the undisputed hero of Pakistan's nuclear saga. Called "the father of the Islamic bomb," Dr. Khan pioneered and led Pakistan's effort to enrich uranium with gas centrifuges. In 1976 he took charge of the secretive Engineering Research Laboratories at Kahuta, now named the A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories in his honor, where he assembled the machinery and manpower it would take to produce weapon-grade uranium. Khan recruited scores of Pakistani scientists living abroad to work with him at Kahuta, boasting that "the scientists and engineers whom I recruited had never heard of a centrifuge, even though some of them were Ph.D.'s."

Khan had learned about gas centrifuges when he worked on uranium enrichment technology for a Dutch company from 1972 to 1975. Khan says he and his colleagues devised "a strategy to buy everything we needed in the open market to lay the foundation of a good infrastructure and would then switch over to indigenous production." In 1983 Khan was sentenced in absentia for trying to steal enrichment secrets from the Netherlands. He denies the charges, and his conviction was overturned in 1986.

In 1990, Pakistan President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, lauded A.Q. Khan's contributions to the nuclear field and declared: "The name of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan will be inscribed in golden letters in the annals of the national history of Pakistan." And even Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has acknowledged his "invaluable contribution not only in the nuclear field but also in other fields including defense production."

A.Q. Khan says Western governments repeatedly tried to prevent Pakistan from developing a nuclear weapon capability, but they were foiled by the greed of their own companies: "Many suppliers approached us with the details of the machinery and with figures and numbers of instruments and materials ... In the true sense of the word, they begged us to purchase their goods. And for the first time the truth of the saying, They will sell their mother for money,' dawned on me. We purchased whatever we required..."

SOURCE:

http://www.wisconsinproject.org/countries/pakistan/khan.html

Ever wonder what greedy American companies participated in selling nuclear technology?

Well one guy who wishes you wouldn't is Sneering Dick Cheney:

Cheney Covered up Pakistan's Nuclear Black Market

By Jason Leopold
Special to the South Asia Tribune
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 12, 2005 | ISSN: 1684-2057 | www.satribune.com

EXCERPT...

Bush, Vice President Cheney and top members of the administration reacted with shock when they found out that Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist, spent the past 15 years selling outlaw nations nuclear technology and equipment. So it was sort of a surprise when Bush, upon finding out about Khan’s proliferation of nuclear technology, let Pakistan off with a slap on the wrist.

But it was all an act. In fact, it was actually a cover-up designed to shield Cheney because he knew about the proliferation for more than a decade and did nothing to stop it.

The International Atomic Energy Association launched an investigation two years ago in an attempt to uncover how Iran obtained components and parts for P-2 centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium into fuel for civilian power reactors.

Iran secured most of its supply on the black market, from the network run by Khan. The network was uncovered last year, leading to Khan's arrest in Pakistan. An ex-Dutch prime minister, Ruud Lubbers, said the CIA had asked the Netherlands in 1975 not to prosecute Khan because US intelligence wanted to find out more about Khan's contacts while he was working as an engineer at the top secret Dutch uranium enrichment plant at Almelo, the BBC reported.

SNIP...

The Bush administration had mountains of evidence on Pakistan’s sales of nuclear technology and equipment to nations vilified by the United States -- nations that are considered much more of a threat than Iraq -- but turned a blind eye to the threat and allowed it to happen.

In 1989, the year Khan first started selling nuclear secrets on the black-market, Richard Barlow, a young intelligence analyst working for the Pentagon, prepared a shocking report for Cheney, who was then working as Secretary of Defense under the first Bush administration: Pakistan had built an atomic bomb and was selling its nuclear equipment to countries the United States said was sponsoring terrorism.

But Barlow’s findings, as reported in a January 2002 story in the magazine Mother Jones, were “politically inconvenient.”

CONTINUED...

http://antisystemic.org/satribune/www.satribune.com/archives/200508/P1_jason.htm

It's like they're evil, or something.

[Norrin Radd]

54. Thank you for the enlightening posts.

[Overseas]

36. K&R ! The Gramms have been friends of John Sidney McCain III for years and years.

So listen, my friends, you know the drill--
just spread your legs, bend over and DON"T WHINE !

[Octafish]

52. McCain's econ brain

Slow Phil knows how to make a quick work of money. Like when he torpedoed First Lady Hillary Clinton's Health Care plan.

McCain's econ brain

Economic conservatives take heart: Phil Gramm is influencing the candidate's platform.

By Shawn Tully, editor-at-large
Fortune
February 19 2008: 5:16 PM ESTEmail | Print Type Size

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Now that the faltering economy has replaced national security as the overriding issue in the presidential campaign, John McCain is portraying himself as a budget-shrinking, flat-tax-embracing, healthcare-privatizing champion of free markets. But is this Reaganesque zealot the real John McCain?

The big question is whether McCain's radical agenda is simply designed to rally the Republican base, or would prove a blueprint for a McCain presidency. Given the Arizona Senator's maverick record, voters have every reason to distrust the new McCain. He twice opposed the Bush tax cuts and keeps dropping disturbing lines like, "I don't know as much about the economy as I should."

But economic conservatives should take heart. McCain's chief economic adviser - and perhaps his closest political friend - is the ultimate pure play in free market faith, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm. If McCain follows Gramm's counsel, and most of his current positions are vintage Gramm indeed, his policies as president would represent not just a sharp departure from the Bush years, but an assault on government growth that Republicans have boasted about, but failed to achieve, for decades.

Since retiring from the Senate in 2002, Gramm - a former economics professor at Texas A&M - has been circling the globe as an investment banker at UBS (UBS). In July, McCain called on his old friend to salvage his floundering campaign.

"The campaign was structured on the belief that McCain would be the prohibitive front-runner, so he'd have no problem raising money," Gramm told Fortune. But McCain's support among voters and contributors collapsed when the "surge" in Iraq, which McCain championed, got off to a shaky start.

"Suddenly it was 'McCain's war,'" says Gramm. With the campaign strapped for cash, Gramm swooped down on McCain headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, and spent a marathon session combing through the books. He helped McCain dramatically shrink the staff and budget. In the fall, McCain re-emerged following the Gramm strategy, as a scrappy insurgent underdog, running on a puny budget.

On the economy, McCain's most daring manifesto is his healthcare plan. Not surprisingly, it bears the Gramm imprint. In fact, McCain has been heeding Gramm's "power-to-the-consumer" approach for more than a decade. The two senators bonded when they linked arms to fight Hillary Clinton's ill-fated healthcare program in 1993. "We couldn't get any press coverage in Washington, DC, so we traveled all over the country, to the regional media markets," says Gramm. In 150 meetings at hospitals and clinics, McCain and Gramm relentlessly pounded the Clinton plan, helping fire the voter outrage that killed the plan in 1994.

CONTINUED...

http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/18/news/newsmakers/tully_gramm.fortune/index.htm

Power to the consumer, all right. And to think they can manage to keep a straight face.

[bulloney]

37. The good part of Gramm's gaffe last week is that the media are exposing him

as the unscrupulous lying sack of shit/snake in the grass that he is.

When his wife Wendy was chair of the CFTC, I never could understand how Phil could vote on any legislation affecting the commission, but he did. I never saw where he abstained due to conflict of interest.

[Octafish]

51. I'm glad, bulloney! Otherwise, GOPdom's getting a free pass on everything else.

Specifically: Corporate McPravda Hearts McCain.

10 McCain Gaffes from This Week That Should Have Damaged His Chances

By Max Bergmann, Huffington Post
Posted on July 12, 2008, Printed on July 14, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/91245/

This is the week that should have effectively ended John McCain's efforts to become the next president of the United States. But you wouldn't know it if you watched any of the mainstream media outlets or followed political reporting in the major newspapers.

During this past week: McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made --- TWICE. Yet watching and reading the mainstream press you would think McCain was having a pretty decent political week, I mean at least Jesse Jackson didn't say anything about him.

But let's unpack McCain's week in a little more detail.

1. McCain unambiguously called Social Security "an absolute disgrace." This is not a quote taken out of context. John McCain called one of the most successful and popular government programs, which uses the tax revenues of current workers to support retirement benefits for the elderly "an absolute disgrace." This is shocking -- and if uttered from Obama's mouth would dominate the news coverage and the Sunday shows, as pundits would speculate about the massive damage the statement would cause him among retirees in Florida.

SNIP...

Any one of these incidents and comments would dominate the news cycle if they came from the Obama campaign. Yet McCain barely gets a mention. The press like to see themselves as political referees -- neutral observers that call them like they see em'. But they want this to be a horse race and so all the calls right now are going one way. How else can you explain the furor last week over the Obama "refine" comment -- which represented zero change in Obama's position on Iraq -- and the "swift boat" mania over Wesley Clark's uncontroversial comments (psss... by the way McCain exploits his POW experience in just about every ad -- yet he says he doesn't like to talk about it).

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/election08/91245/?ses=7b43417943db98462272fd062328f611

What's weird to me is how the Press Corpse absolutely ADORES the war criminal George W Bush.

[Cha]

38. Thanks, Octafish~Rec'd..

Weird how the wives, Cindy and Wendy, have that same fatalistic look on their collective face. :(

[Octafish]

49. Hi, zidzi! Their countenances are the saddest I've ever seen on people who should be happy.

With all they've got, who'd have thought money can't buy love?

[happygoluckytoyou]

40. anyone who has missed 8 years of CLASS WARFARE is not paying attention

and the greatest gift the GOP ever got was getting COMMON REDNEX to think they were among the RICH

TIME TO CHOOSE SIDES

[Octafish]

48. It may be Phil's the Meyer Lansky of the BFEE.

He has been positioned to move the money from ENRON to the Caymans to Switzerland.

A whole lot of money.

Senator Phil Gramm led the Senate Banking Committee which sponsored the Act to repeal Glass - Steagall banking laws; he later joined UBS Warburg, at the time the investment banking arm of the largest Swiss bank.

SOURCE: http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showConnection.php?id1=2702&id2=608

He's awesome.



He's a person of means.

[McCamy Taylor]

41. K&R

[Octafish]

50. Phil Gramm's UBS Problem

Phil Gramm's UBS Problem

If the Texas senator and McCain adviser was supposed to keep the Swiss bank out of trouble, he's made a mess of it.

By Daniel Gross
SLATE.com
Posted Monday, July 7, 2008, at 5:58 PM ET

Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm has emerged as the key behind-the-scenes economics/Wall Street guy for John McCain and is being touted as the treasury secretary in waiting. Since 2002, Gramm has been an executive with the U.S. operations of UBS, the giant Swiss Bank. An unintentionally hilarious interview with Gramm on the Wall Street Journal editorial page last week asserted that Gramm has "been a key instigator of some of the biggest money-making UBS deals of recent years." The interview was noteworthy not just for first-class butt-kissing, but for deliberately gliding over the avalanche of disasters in the past year that has turned UBS from a respected Swiss titan of discretion and risk management into a laughing stock. As this one-year chart shows, UBS's stock lost nearly 70 percent of its value and now stands at levels not seen since 2002, when Gramm signed up.

OK, the entire investment banking business in the past year has been an international clown show. Virtually every U.S. and European institution has been laid low by badly placed bets on subprime mortgages and forced into humiliating rounds of dilutive capital raising. Bear Stearns was clearly the worst. Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers have taken large hits. But among foreign institutions, none has fared worse in the United States than UBS. And its employees seem to have compounded their violations of common sense with violations of more serious laws.

UBS's investment banking unit made disastrous forays into subprime lending. Last December, having already announced a third-quarter loss, UBS raised about $13 billion to replenish its balance sheets, mostly from the Government of Singapore Investment Corp. In the fourth quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008, it racked up Mont Blanc-sized losses on subprime debt of nearly $32 billion. In May, it sold about $15 billion worth of mortgage-related assets to the investment firm BlackRock—but only after it agreed to finance most of the purchase price. In June, UBS raised another $15.5 billion in a rights offering. The credit losses—some $38 billion so far, according to UBS—caused the bank to replace its chairman and install new leadership at its investment bank.

UBS was hardly alone in getting caught up in the global credit bubble—although its losses are truly impressive. But UBS has suffered further reputation damage. Late last month, the state of Massachusetts charged UBS with screwing over well-heeled customers who had purchased auction-rate securities. The mechanics of auction-rate securities—instruments that pay a slightly higher rate of interest than municipal bonds or cash deposits and were thought by many purchasers and brokers to be as safe as cash—are complicated. But the issue is relatively simple and familiar to anyone who has combed through the Spitzer Wall Street research settlement of 2003. UBS stands accused of selling retail brokerage customers products that turned out to be profitable for the bank's investment banking unit but caused the customers to suffer significant losses. (Read some of the internal e-mails here.)

These charges, levied by a state regulator, are already causing reputation damage to UBS. (Dow Jones reported today that retail brokers are fleeing.) UBS's asset management business is likely to suffer further from an ongoing federal investigation, in which Bradley Birkenfeld, an American UBS private banker who was busted on tax evasion charges, has plead guilty and is cooperating. Among the revelations so far: Birkenfeld helped a client bring in diamonds from abroad by stashing them in a tube of toothpaste.

CONTINUED with Lots o’ Links:

http://www.slate.com/id/2194933

They have looted the U.S. Treasury, made trillions off of war, ripped off their rich investor chums and mopes, penured the middle class, and they're STILL having problems covering their tracks.

[Kaleko]

53. Thank you for this excellent thread. n/t

[Octafish]

56. Day of Reckoning? Super Rich Tax Cheats Outed by Bank Clerk

Grammstanding.

Day of Reckoning? Super Rich Tax Cheats Outed by Bank Clerk

Technician in Liechtenstein Turns Over Names of Americans With Secret Bank Accounts

By BRIAN ROSS and RHONDA SCHWARTZ
July 15, 2008 96 comments
ABC News

Hundreds of super-rich American tax cheats have, in effect, turned themselves in to the IRS after a bank computer technician in the tiny European country of Liechtenstein came forward with the names of US citizens who had set up secret accounts there, according to Washington lawyers investigating the scheme.

The bank clerk, Heinrich Kieber, has been branded a thief by the government of Liechtenstein for violating the country's bank secrecy laws.

He is now in hiding but scheduled to testify to the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Thursday via a video statement from a secret location, according to Congressional investigators.

Aides for committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) are scheduled to provide reporters with a background briefing later this morning in Washington on the committee's investigation of tax haven banks in Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

SNIP...

A former UBS private banker, Bradley Birkenfeld, has agreed to a plea deal and is reported to be cooperating with US authorities in bring charges against American citizens on tax evasion charges.

CONTINUED...

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5378080&page=1

Most importantly: You are most welcome, Kaleko! We aren't just witnessing history. Thank you for giving a damn!