"Business without Borders - Next Step?"
Enron, which has an energy trading room in its Houston headquarters which rivals the trading rooms of the big Wall Street investment banks, is perhaps the single company most responsible for the chaos in today's domestic energy markets. Its ``success'' in energy speculation has raised virtually every electricity bill, natural gas bill, and heating oil bill in the country, some of them by orders of magnitude,
Enron is a relative newcomer, but plays an important role in allowing the financial sharks, under the guise of deregulation, to get their hands on the income streams generated from the production and consumption of electricity, natural gas, and related energy products. Enron's fortunes are directly tied to the Bush League: Enron is the single largest contributor to the political campaigns of President George W. Bush, and the firm hired as ``consultants'' a number of top officials of his father's administration--including James Baker III, and Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher--after they left Washington. In return, these officials used their political pull to get Enron a series of lucrative contracts around the world. Enron chairman Kenneth Lay has been touted as a potential member of the Bush Cabinet, and Southern Strategy zealot Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) is widely known as ``the Congressman from Enron.''
Enron is ``Dubya'' Bush's biggest career patron, having given him more than $500,000, according to the Center for Public Integrity.