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Schultheiss, Heidilynne

From: —Ringle, Judy (Judy.Ringle@ssa.gov}
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 1:25 PM
To: ‘Schultheiss, Heidilynne (work)'
Subject: Did you see this? Its in today's

Enron and the Gramms

Sy BOB HERBERT

fy hen Senator Phil Gramm and his wife Wendy danced. i was most often to Enron's tune. |

on largess in the Senate. An:
one of the ringleaders whs
commodity trading from
) a bright ribbon for Enron.

Mr. Grarnm, a Texas Republican, is one of the top recipients of &
he is a demon for deregulation. In December 2000 Mr. Gramm +
engineered the stealthlike approval of a bill that exempted e
government regulation and public disclosure. It was a gift tied

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 « ht 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 *ror
1993 to 2001."

As a board member, Ms. Gramm has served on Enron's audit committee, but her eyesight wasr
any better than that of the folks at Arthur Andersen. The one } Enron did not pay big bucks
for was vigilance.

There's a lot more you can say about the Gramms and Enron, anc not much of it good. But Phil |
and Wendy Gramm are just convenient symptoms of the problem that has contributed so mighti
to the Enron debacle and other major scandals of our time gs and loan disaster t
the Firestone tires fiasco. That problem is the obsession with deregulation that has had such @
hold on the Republican Party and corporate America.

An article in yesterday's Times noted the extensive links betw
congressman Tom DeLay. Mr. DeLay became unhappy w
senior treasury official in the Clinton administration — to +
article said, “whatever the tensions last year, Mr. DeLay an
days in the Texas Capitol, Mr. DeLay was called Dereg by 2b
business. And in Congress he has been a longtime proponent of
dear to Enron."

‘on and the powerful Texas
i wooed a Democra! — a
5 Washington office. "Still," the

had a natural alliance. in bh
use of his support of
ergy deregulation, an issue |

Enron exploited the deregulation mania to the max, and the resuit ias been economic ruin for
thousands upon thousands of hard-working families. As Public Citizen put it, "Enron developed
mutually beneficial relationships with federal regulators and |awmakers to support policies that

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tly curtailed government oversight of [its] operations

The kind of madness that went on at Enron could only hav
Andersen was supposed to have been looking at the book:
ideology of deregulation allowed that company to escape effe:
revolving-door abuses and pernicious financial arrangements be
auditors like Andersen that are similar to those between
agencies

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

regulation zealots had their way, we'd be left with
ing into rivers, children's pajamas bursting into flary
rapacious and unscrupulous than they are now.

Enron manipulated the energy markets and cooked its own books in ways

at has been widely characterized as a "black hole" th
hn basic questions as how the company made its mor

long will it take? How many decades and how many
Ne h on? \e're human. We're self-interested. And v
will do the wrong thing

Some perspective is needed. Unchecked deregulation !s ute

Where the public interest is involved, a certain amount of <
essential

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company{ Privacy Information

Judith A. Ringle, Attorney

Office of the Counsel to the Inspector General
Social Security Administration

6401 Security Blvd, Rm. 300 Altmeyer
Baltimore, MD 21235

(410)966-6906

judy.ringle@ssa.gov

rished in the dark. Arthur

vast shadows cast by the
scrutiny as well. So you have
2en companies like Enron an
nnanies and government

wn devices, some of us

effective oversight —

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that would not have

come and go befers

to chaos anc iraged

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