From today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Enron traders derided users":
Enron energy traders in the company's Portland office spoke openly of reducing power supplies and jacking up prices at the expense of consumers and "poor grandmothers," according to recorded phone conversations filed last month with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.The Snohomish County Public Utilities District, which obtained the recordings from the federal government and transcribed them, submitted the transcripts to the FERC as part of its legal proceeding to receive reimbursements for Enron's price increases.
[. . .]
On the calls, traders openly and gleefully discussed creating congestion on transmission lines, taking generating units offline to pump up electricity prices and overall manipulation of the California power market.
They also kidded about Enron's hefty political contributions -- particularly to Bush's 2000 presidential campaign -- and how that could translate into more opportunity for profit in California.
"I'd love to see Ken Lay be secretary of energy," one trader said, referring to the now-disgraced former Enron chief executive whose ties to the Bush administration have drawn criticism from Democrats.
In one transcript, a trader asks about "all the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers of California."
To which the Enron trader responds, "Yeah, Grandma Millie, man. But she's the one who couldn't figure out how to (expletive) vote on the butterfly ballot."
"Yeah, now she wants her (expletive) money back for all the power you've charged right up -- jammed right up her (expletive) for (expletive) 250 dollars a megawatt-hour," the first trader says.
Well, Kenneth Lay - a Bush campaign Pioneer in 2000 - didn't get the Secretary of Energy gig, but he was on the Energy Department transition team when Bush took the White House, and Lay recommended two of the people on the five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (via The Washington Post).
Yes, that would be the same FERC that just received the Enron transcripts.
