``..If he did, he sure wasn't successful, was he? As I remember, Enron's rating quickly went to junk and the Dynegy deal accordingly tanked...'' Michael
``...Still, the key fact is that Rubin -- arrayed in all the glory of his former Cabinent status -- joined in the effort to mislead a debt rating agency...'' Carl
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Hey Carl, could you re-post the lawsuit link. The old archives are down, and I forgot the new archive url.
Anyway, the series of dots I want to see connected which I am not sure this lawsuit will do is to the White House. Before these bail out meetings with Citigroup and Enron were going on--in the winter-spring 2001(?), California's utility de-regulation law was being phased in starting in San Diego and working its way to the northern counties. Enron et al were creating false scarcities just months after implementation to boost rates. I suspect they were doing this to keep from making the kinds of loans and deals they did with Rubin and others later, because they were already failing. So the faked rate hikes were just an earlier effort to keep aflout.
When that failed they were also meeting with Cheney and Abraham. It's those meetings that I want to see exposed. Then backing up about a year or two, the whole de-regulation scheme that this nightmare was built on, was pushed by ex-governor Wilson. He was leveraging the legislature to pass utility de-regulation, but he was assisted by a series of energy lobby groups. I think at lease one of them was Tom DeLay's `Citizens for Cheaper Energy' (or some such title) which was almost entirely funded by Enron. And let's not forget Enron money to Bush and Cheney campaigns.
This scene is not just a question of state employee pension fund losses or Houston employee's loosing their jobs and retirement, or the greedy little investors on Wall Street. This is a massive fraud that involves half the Executive Branch, probably all of the Texas delegation in Congress in bilking schemes against at least several states and countries. The telecomm fiasco is another beauty, especially centered around WorldCom---home of Trent Lott, Thad Cochran et al.
It would sure be nice if some journalist somewhere put this entire energy de-regulation fraud together with all the players named and the all the dots connected. I can barely keep track.
Chuck Grimes