Political Quotes

“I rise in support of Senator Feinstein's motion to table the Reid amendment. Let me say at the outset, when she came to me with this concept, it struck me as not only fair but good policy. How did we get into this mess with the seventh largest corporation in the United States going bankrupt and dragging down with it thousands of innocent investors, pensioners at Enron, not to mention the employees who lost jobs, or the employees that other companies, like Andersen which is based in Chicago, who stand to lose their jobs. It all came about because the folks in Houston who worked for Enron Corporation tried to take as many business activities as possible off the books. They did not want the world to see what was going on behind the corporate boardroom doors at Enron. The greatest fear they had was daylight, the possibility that people would know what they were doing. So they created these elaborate pyramid schemes. They created a multitude of corporations. They hid debt. They managed to, in many ways, deceive some well-meaning people into believing they were a prosperous and profitable corporation. One of the instruments and weapons they used in this battle was this whole notion of trading in energy futures, energy derivatives without Government oversight.”