Word: enronizing
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...when top Enron officers bombarded Washington with dire pleas for help last fall, something almost unprecedented happened: nothing. Though both sides had been in contact for months on a variety of issues, at the moment the company threw itself down at the mercy of the feds, top officials at Treasury and Commerce said, in effect, "See ya." Even Robert Rubin, the Clinton Treasury Secretary who dialed up on behalf of Enron's creditors at Citigroup, was turned away by Bush officials...
...government's safety net of market, accounting and energy regulation to open the door to more than half a dozen congressional probes--and to give some cover to the hundreds of lawmakers from both parties (including 212 of the 248 involved in the hearings) who had taken money from Enron or its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen. By then the White House seemed cocky. For reasons no one can explain, it went through with its plan to make one of Enron's former lobbyists, former Montana Governor Marc Racicot, the new Republican National Committee boss...
...Then Enron dealt them a fresh hand. The implosion of the huge Texas energy firm and the sudden loss of retirement funds for thousands of employees and pensioners opened up all the pathways to Scandalland that had been closed since Sept. 11. Every populist conflict in the Democratic playbook has at least a cameo role in the Enron drama: fat cats versus little guys, energy producers versus energy consumers, corporate secrets versus shareholder democracy, business-friendly Republicans against lunch-pail Democrats...
...week, when the Congressional Budget Office found that 70% of the federal budget surpluses for this year and the next had evaporated under the weight of last year's tax cuts, the recession and lower post-Sept. 11 spending, it was only a matter of time before someone made Enron a verb. Bush, said Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, is "slowly Enronizing the economy. Enronizing the budget. We are taking the same approach Enron used in sapping retirement funds and providing them to those at the very top. That's exactly what Enron did. And I'd sure hate...
...when the first Senate hearing on Enron got under way, it felt less like an inquiry and more like a warm, ritual bath designed to soak away the stain of contributions. Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who got $2,000 from Enron and $11,500 from Arthur Andersen in the past decade, invited former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt, the nation's leading accounting hawk, to do the scrubbing and apply the rinses. That gave Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, who was until recently the subject of a federal probe into his campaign finances, a chance to apologize to Levitt...