To Hell With Aunt Millie: part deux
by digby
This is Bob Badeer (a trader at Enron’s West Power desk in Portland, CA, where all these tapes were recorded) and Kevin McGowan (in Enron’s central office in Houston, TX, as he mentions in the transcript):
KEVIN: So,
BOB: (laughing)
KEVIN: So the rumor’s true? They’re fuckin’ takin’ all the money back from you guys? All those money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?
BOB: Yeah, grandma Millie, man. But she’s the one who couldn’t figure out how to fuckin’ vote on the butterfly ballot.
KEVIN: Yeah, now she wants her fuckin’ money back for all the power you’ve charged right up – jammed right up her ass for fuckin’ 250 dollars a megawatt hour.
BOB: You know – you know – you know, grandma Millie, she’s the one that Al Gore’s fightin’ for, you know? You’re not going to –
BOB: Grandma Millie –
Ah those were the days.
The whole Enron business was a bit of an embarrassment what with Kennyboy Lay being Bush’s strongest supporter and all, but it was blamed on a few bad apples and quickly swept under a rug. Bush was such a brilliant leader that we couldn’t afford to taint him with that unpleasantness. But the ethos, unsurprisingly, lived on:
The top dogs of the big three credit rating companies made $80 million in compensation while their firms gave bogus high ratings to trillions in dubious mortgage-related investments which led to the world’s current financial meltdown — and a hearing before bitter lawmakers on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning.
“The story of the credit rating agencies is a story of colossal failure,” Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will tell the men when they appear before his committee this morning, according to a draft of his prepared comments. “The result is that our entire financial system is now at risk.”
The top executives — Moody’s Corporation CEO Raymond W. McDaniel, Standard & Poor’s president Deven Sharma, and Fitch Ratings’ president and CEO Stephen Joynt — are expected to say the meltdown of mortgage-backed securities was “unanticipated” and “unprecedented.”
But confidential documents obtained by Waxman’s investigators show that the firms’ executives anticipated much of what has happened, and were aware that their ratings were quite possibly shaky, according to the chairman.
“It could be structured by cows and we would rate it,” one Standard & Poor’s employee wrote in a company email cited by Waxman. “Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters,” wrote another in an email obtained by Waxman’s committee.
I’m sure a lot of them are more than wealthy enough to be able to retire quite comfortably. And from the looks of things, nothing will be done about that. The big boys are all taking care of one another and making sure that their social class isn’t badly impacted by this unfortunate turn of events.
As for us grandma Millies well … in the immortal words of the Enron traders:
KEVIN: They’re so fucked and they’re so, like totally
BOB: They are so fucked.
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