Thanks a lot, Congressman Phil Gramm. Hope you enjoyed your new oil-money yacht, hookers and blow... also prepare to enjoy hell in your gasoline drawers.
The Enron Loophole is the nickname for a provision written into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) of 2000 that was drafted by lobbyists for Enron and inserted in the bill by then Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) that deregulated an aspect of the market Enron sought to exploit with its “Enron On-Line” trading program, the first Internet-based commodities transaction system.
The “Enron loophole” Gramm had added to the bill took exchanges and derivative oil contracts out of supervisory oversight and caused the California energy fiasco shortly after.
Go to http://closeloophole.org to take action! Write to your senators.
And while we're on the subject, I wish McCain would stop it with the 'gas-tax holiday' already (seriously, does that man not have an economic adviser?). It's well past bread and circuses now. Throwing the public a stupid bone like that doesn't get anywhere near fixing the root of the problem - speculation and unregulated trading. Neither does drilling in Alaska; according to the Energy Information Administration, drilling in ANWR will result in additional oil production of a peak in 2024 at 870,000 barrels a day, trimming $0.75 (in 2006 dollars) off the projected cost of a barrel of oil by 2025. That's right, less than one dollar off per barrel of oil. It'll take 10 years for production to begin & cost more than than it will benefit. It's a terrible business decision that no company with viable long-term goals would even consider.
Not only will opening up ANWR to drilling not bring us enough oil, the oil companies already have approved off-shore drilling leases for areas they're not using, and which they refuse to drill, meanwhile lobbying congress to open up Alaska.
Gasoline drawers also await the oil industry lobbyists in hell, where they can reminisce over old times with Phil Gramm.
