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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Grokca: [QB] I found this in a Canadian newspaper, maybe it is a less partisan look at the situation or maybe this guys full of it you be the judge. Ingram: Enron's fall has little to do with Bush By BY MATHEW INGRAM Globe and Mail Update Monday, January 14, 2002 – Online edition, Posted at 4:19 PM Some U.S. pundits are already arguing that the collapse of former energy giant Enron Corp. is George Bush Jr.'s version of the Clinton-era Whitewater scandal, or perhaps even worse — a story replete with private phone calls between senior executives and high-ranking officials, suspicious campaign donations and all manner of Texas-style, good-old-boy favouritism. Not only that, but critics say the Enron debacle calls into question the validity of the Bush government's entire energy deregulation strategy. Is there any justification for such attacks? No — although the U.S. Congress is doing its best to find some. It's calling out the hounds for not just one investigation but a total of six (if you include all the various sub-committees). If the Whitewater case is any guide, these will turn up all kinds of interesting wrinkles, most of which will have no bearing on the actual subject of the hearings. While he was the governor of Texas, did George W. Bush accept football tickets from an Enron executive? That must explain why a $65-billion (U.S.) company went under. There's no question there are all kinds of links between the Bush government and the energy titan-turned-basketcase. Former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay is an old friend of Mr. Bush, and of Vice-President Dick Cheney — is that surprising, given that the president was the governor of Texas, and Enron is based in Houston? Enron executives also helped finance Mr. Bush's gubernatorial campaign, as well as the campaign of Attorney-General John Ashcroft, who said he is recusing himself from the case. There's more. White House economist Larry Lindsey was once a paid adviser to Enron; Mr. Cheney's energy task force met with Enron regularly; a top member of the Republican national committee was an Enron lobbyist until recently. Enron employees have donated millions to members of the Bush government over the past few years, including George Jr. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans got phone calls from Enron looking for help last fall, and one report even says Enron executives called Fed chairman Alan Greenspan asking for government aid. Again, these links aren't all that surprising — and they only seem suspicious because Enron has become the poster child for corporate mismanagement and funny accounting. Did the company try to use its connections when it looked like its balance sheet was coming apart at the seams? Of course it did. Did it succeed? That's not clear. Phone calls were made, yes — but at least so far, it doesn't look like Enron really got anywhere. Is the fact that they called enough for us to condemn the Bush government now? Maybe not, critics say — but then there's the fact that the Bush White House clearly engineered the deregulation of the energy industry to benefit Enron, and even removed and/or appointed people to various regulatory bodies at the behest of Enron. Are those charges true? That's likely to depend on whether you think deregulation was the right strategy in the first place. If you don't, then any actions taken in support of it are questionable, and must have been undertaken with some ulterior motive. At the moment, two things make energy deregulation look bad: the experience in California, and the downfall of Enron itself. But what happened in California — with prices spiking skyward, rolling blackouts and electricity companies filing for bankruptcy — was more a result of that state's energy policies than George W. Bush's government. California underestimated demand, blocked competing energy projects and forced energy providers to use natural gas (which climbed in price). The fact that prices spiked on the spot market, which Enron was deeply involved in, was a symptom, not a cause. No matter how it is spun by privatization opponents, Enron's fall is not an indictment of the entire idea of energy deregulation. Opening up natural gas markets and electricity markets so that they can be traded like any other commodity was not something Enron invented so that it could pick shareholders' pockets with the help of George W. Bush. It makes eminent sense, and with proper supervision it can make those markets healthier and provide more protection from volatile prices, rather than less. Enron's downfall seems more a case of a company believing its own sales job, aided and abetted by some fancy accounting and a compliant brokerage industry. Enron convinced investors — including major banks, pension funds and other institutions — that its energy trading business was a perpetual growth machine, spinning off profits indefinitely. This appears to have been accomplished by keeping most of the real costs behind the scenes, through the use of offshore, supposedly arms-length holding companies. In that sense, what happened (and is happening) at Enron doesn't seem to be a particularly original story, but merely a very, very large variation on an old tale — one which has little or nothing to do with the Bush government, and more to do with corporate hubris. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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