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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (14002)	1/26/2002 1:26:19 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

>>Did Enron buy political influence? Please. That's not the way things work in Washington. Enron bought access. Money just got it in the door to make its case. (The case it made probably went something like this: If the government does things Enron's way a lot of people will get very rich and they will be very, very grateful to the wise leaders who made it all possible.) If you're asking whether the Bush administration did favors for Enron, sure it did — and so, by the way, did the Clinton administration, and both parties in Congress. Attention has focused on a number of fascinating loopholes lawmakers and regulators secretly customized for Enron. But — and here's another Enron Lesson — most of what Washington contributed to the glory of Enron it did in plain sight. Politicians demonized government regulation, and methodically dismantled the safeguards set up in previous downturns to protect little investors. They promoted the cult of stock-market speculation, even calling for Social Security funds to be fed to Wall Street. They cut taxes and all but stopped auditing tax returns. I'd say Enron's campaign donations, about $6 million over the past dozen years, paid off better than most of its other investments. << The irony here is that Enron tried to buy so much access, spreading the wealth across party lines, that politicians are now falling all over themselves trying to paint Enron as the evil empire just to prove that their hands were in no way sullied. Now that the jig is up. nemo judex in suo causa