Jeb Bush and the Florida Enron scandal ($335 million loss in state pension funds)

[seafan]

Here is another piece of Jeb Bush's heavy political baggage that as yet still escapes public airing after a decade has gone by.



Here is the set-up:

Jeb Bush was Governor of Florida from January 1999 until January 2007. He enjoyed deep and long-standing political ties to Enron and Ken Lay, benefiting from Lay's lavish gubernatorial campaign donations as Jeb worked outside of the public view to further Enron's interests in the state of Florida, which, at the time, included Enron's scheme to help pay for Everglades restoration in exchange for water rights. Enron also had plans to deregulate Florida's electrical markets and to build more power plants in the state.

Before Jeb Bush became governor, Enron had already started steering money to Florida legislative House races in 1996 and 1998, with most of it going to Republicans.


As Governor, Jeb Bush was one of three trustees of the Florida Retirement Pension Fund, and acted as chair of its oversight board. Alliance Capital Management's money manager, Alfred Harrison, was repeatedly investing Florida's pension funds into Enron shares in 2000-2001, and, shockingly, continuing to do so in 2001 until Enron was just days away from plummeting into bankruptcy. Florida's pension fund lost $335 million from its Enron holdings, leaving thousands of retired Enron employees' shares worthless.

And Jeb waltzed away. Thus far.



January 27, 2002, in the NY Times:

The Enron scandal, which has become the consuming interest in Washington and around the country, is starting to have a particular resonance in Florida, where it is touching another Bush: Governor Jeb Bush.

.....

Mr. Bush particularly has been able to steer clear so far of the enormous damage to the state employees' pension fund, which lost more than any other public pension fund. Almost until Enron collapsed, the Florida fund continued to pour money into Enron stock. As governor, Mr. Bush is one of the fund's three trustees, although the fund has said that Mr. Bush never ordered the purchase of Enron shares or the hiring of the money manager who did.

''You've got to credit Jeb Bush,'' said Richard Scher, professor of political science at the University of Florida at Gainesville. ''He's been wonderful in keeping the issue quiet. Nothing has been coming out. He's been very shrewd in how he's handled it politically and lucky the legislature is in session and drawing attention away. The Enron Florida angle has not come home to roost yet.''

.....

Whether these financial losses will cost Mr. Bush some political capital remains to be seen. ''The Enron issue is right out there to be seized on,'' said Mr. Scher, the political science professor. ''But no one has done anything with it yet.''

March 3, 2002, NY Times:

THREE months into the Enron scandal, many mysteries remain unsolved.

.....

(Alfred) Harrison's purchases were such a wrong-way bet that many people here cannot believe it was just a bad call; they have darker suspicions. One involves Frank Savage, an Enron board member who was an Alliance executive and who, along with Mr. Harrison, is a member of the Alliance board. Did he encourage any of Mr. Harrison's purchases of Enron shares?

This theory, denied by both Alliance and Mr. Savage's lawyer, is under investigation by Robert A. Butterworth, the state's attorney general, and by a United States Senate panel whose members include Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida.

.....

Another hypothesis involves Gov. Jeb Bush, one of the three trustees of the Florida fund, officially called the Florida Retirement System. In this highly partisan state, where the presidential vote count in 2000 further inflamed political passions, the question is whether Governor Bush, a Republican, was behind the Enron stock purchases. That suggestion has been denied by the fund's executive director and its two other trustees, who said the governor had no role in picking stocks, whether of Enron or of any company.

.....

(By the way, that executive director denying any role by Jeb Bush was Coleman Stipanovich, whose brother, J. M. "Mac" Stipanovich, ran Jeb Bush's gubernatorial campaign in 1994...)

.....

''HERE'S someone who lost the state some $300 million,'' Mr. Butterworth, the Florida attorney general, said in an interview in his spacious office. ''This isn't something he accumulated over years, but bought in a four- or five-week period. He's buying the stock in big amounts two weeks before he sells it for 28 cents a share. It cries out for an investigation. It screams out.''

.....

So it came as a surprise to Florida fund officials that on Nov. 30, a day after Mr. Harrison sent them an e-mail message outlining a cautious belief in Enron, he sold their entire Enron position. He did not tell the fund until after the sale was completed, an oversight that inflamed already sore feelings. ..... The fund's 7.6 million shares were sold in a private placement to Lehman Brothers, something that has Mr. Herndon scratching his head. Never before had the fund's shares been sold in a private placement, said Mr. Herndon,.....

.....

All of the Enron shares were quickly sold to Lehman??



Was Lehman Brothers one of the investors who was shorting Enron? Was Lehman being tipped off on Enron's coming demise via Alliance's money manager Alfred Harrison, who was also being overseen by Trustee Governor Jeb Bush? Was Mr. Harrison "encouraged" by Jeb Bush or a surrogate to continue buying Enron stock, even as it was crashing in value?

We have not seen the answers to these questions.


And we noticed that a scant 5 months after Jeb Bush left office in January, 2007, Lehman Brothers investment firm hired Jeb Bush & Associates as consultants in June, 2007.


A nice thank you from Lehman to Jeb Bush, perhaps, for access to Florida's pension funds for all of these years?



Notice how all of this fits in with the news from December 1, 2007:

Forbes: Jeb Bush involvement with Lehman raises questions in Florida investment fund debacle



The questions remain:


Did Jeb Bush engineer the Enron stock purchases by the Florida pension fund in 2001?


Was Jeb Bush, acting as a paid Lehman consultant in 2007, behind the purchase of bad Lehman paper by the Florida state investment fund in 2007? (Coleman Stipanovich, Jeb's earlier Enron defender, was still executive director of the State Board of Administration at the time of this next state investment debacle in 2007, and had been since 2002. He finally quit in December, 2007.)



So.....


Someone used Florida's pension funds to prop up Enron. Someone used Florida's investment funds to prop up Lehman.



There are too many parallels here. And one person bridging all of it.




As former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth said, all of this screams out for an investigation.




Jeb Bush will not be able to sidestep from this much longer.

[Divine Discontent]

1. I don't think seacat would have done more damage to Florida than Jebby did!

but seriously. I don't know how millions can be so damned dumb... This state went from a pretty good governor to a wretched governor when he got in. This skeletor guy we have now is a piece of work. I hope he goes all around the state with the GOP nominee.

[No Elephants]

2. Most people at Enron got away with everything. Jeb Bush will, too.

[seafan]

3. FL Senator Nelson: 'Was anyone at Alliance or Enron trying to prop up the value of Enron stock?'

Alfred Harrison, 'star money manager' and Alliance board member, who repeatedly bought plummeting Enron stock for the Florida pension fund, claimed he didn't know that Frank Savage, an Alliance executive and fellow board member at Alliance, was also an Enron board member.


Right-oh.



In the 2002 NYT piece:

.....

''What Alliance (via money manager Alfred Harrison) was doing in buying lots of shares as Enron was plummeting does not sound like a prudent business practice,'' said Senator (Bill) Nelson, who, as Florida's state treasurer from 1995 to 2000, had been one of the fund's trustees. ''It was totally bizarre. I want to know whether anyone at Alliance or Enron was trying to prop up the value of Enron stock.''

.....

Until the Enron debacle, Mr. Harrison had been one of its top stock pickers. Since 1984, he had generated 16 percent annualized returns by making big bets on a small number of large companies.

His trademark was what his promotional literature called ''V'' investing -- buying companies whose shares had been beaten down and making money when they rose again. Among his big winners were MBNA, Motorola and Cisco Systems; after the terrorist attacks, he made a quick large gain on Continental Airlines.

.....

Starting in November 2000, when Enron stock traded for about $80 a share, Mr. Harrison, who is based in Minneapolis, began buying. But he really stepped up his buying in the fall of 2001, riding the stock down with increasingly large purchases. By the time he sold the fund's 7.6 million shares in November, Enron was fetching a mere 28 cents a share.

.....

(bold type added)

.....

As bad news about Enron began to accumulate, Florida officials would question Mr. Harrison. In October, they asked him about the large number of investors with short positions, bets that Enron's stock would fall. The notes of that teleconference said Mr. Harrison shared Enron management's view that ''outsiders just don't understand.''

''Al said that often you either believe in a company and their management or you don't,'' the memo said.

.....

Hmmmm, we've heard a similarly worded sentiment from Jeb Bush himself...'You either trust me or you don't', as he faced questions in 2002 about a former business partner who landed under a fraud investigation.



But that is another story in the revolving carousel of Jeb Bush's political baggage, that deserves fresh scrutiny.

[classysassy]

4. The Bush family

have done more harm to America than any family in the history of this country.

[madfloridian]

5. Seafan, I just shared your journal.

I twittered it.