Has Phil "Enron Loophole" Gramm answered for his role in high gas prices?

[deminks]

I was reading a real puff piece on Gramm in the WSJ that did not mention oil one time in the interview.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121460589609712025.html?mod=hps_us_inside_today

Phil Gramm
The Return of Dr. No
By STEPHEN MOORE
June 28, 2008; Page A9

"They didn't live up to what they promised to do. Power corrupted them. They spent lots of money and tried to buy votes. Republicans concluded that they could make voters love them by governing the way Democrats did."

So says former Texas senator and current John McCain economics adviser Phil Gramm.

When he rode off into the political sunset in 2002 for a high-rolling investment banking job at UBS, there was joy among many of his liberal colleagues on Capitol Hill. For two decades the man who came to be called "Dr. No" had earned a reputation as a one-man wrecking crew of big-government legislative priorities. "I consider defeating Hillary health care as one of my greatest accomplishments," he says.

(snip)

Most of his former colleagues probably can't fathom why Wall Street bankers make tens of millions of dollars in salaries and bonuses each year. How would he justify these fat pay days? "It's simple," he lectures, sounding very much like the Texas A&M economics professor that he was in the 1970s: "In economics, we define labor exploitation as paying people less than their marginal value product. I recently told Ed Whitacre he was probably the most exploited worker in American history because he took Southwestern Bell, which was the smallest of the former Bell companies, and he turned it into the dominant phone company on earth. His severance package should have been billions."

(snip)


Then, in a little box off to the side, there was a link to a letter that Gramm wrote to the WSJ.



If you thought Chimpy and Unka Dick had hubris, you ain't seen nothin yet.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121461224544312539.html?mod=The-Saturday-Interview

Honestly, I Had No Clue One Senator Had Such Power

I didn't know until I started reading it in all the papers lately that Sen. Barack Obama credits Big Oil and me for $4-a-gallon gasoline. Those stories, and the Obama campaign press outreach that preceded them, rekindled memories of the unlimited power I used to wield ("Political Speculators," Review & Outlook, June 24).

I'd totally forgotten how the stage was set for catastrophe when those greedy oil companies and the selfish public and private pension funds that own them surreptitiously spurred economic growth in China and India, and how the oil giants then refused to drill in the outer continental shelf or ANWR, and how we -- I mean they -- connived to kill nuclear power!

I can only marvel at how I evidently suckered Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, Arthur Levitt, and the Clinton White House staff into limiting the power of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to control speculation. I don't recall doing it, but who else was so powerful and wily? And was it me who induced the House Agriculture Committee, where I was not a member, to write language protecting energy swaps and then seduced the full House into passing it 377-4 with the endorsements of those dupes of the oil industry, John Dingell and Ed Markey? Not to mention amending the unamendable conference report in the Senate? I must have been on top of my game that night!

Now that Sen. Obama has reminded me of all my evil-doing, I'm trying to repent but I may not make it to the promised land with him because redemption requires that I substitute fantasy for experience and evidence. How convenient are oil companies and speculators when they excuse us from making the hard choices required to produce more energy here at home at a price that Americans can afford to pay. Still, I do appreciate the Obama campaign showing me that glorious place where all our problems evaporate when we can find someone else to blame. Unfortunately, that place is not on earth. Here, leaders have to lead and nations have to choose, and change you can believe in is based on facts that are real and choices that are hard.

Phil Gramm
Former Senator (R., Texas)
San Antonio, Texas

For the real Gramm:

http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2767

[CanonRay]

1. The MSM won't touch this one with a ten foot pole

Other than KO, I haven't heard a word about him.

[Warpy]

2. He hasn't answered for his role in making sure 9/11 got funded

He fought banking legislation sought by the Clinton administration that would have tightened up the flow through offshore conduits and cut off funding for the 9/11 plot.

He was protecting Enron's ability to launder money.

[leftofthedial]

3. yes, he's paid

well. he has his life of luxury and privilege