Enron was a much more complex, longer, more wide ranging fraud though. This was just straight up "CEO moves client money to his other company" theft. It's almost staggeringly simple and mundane...
> Enron forgot to grease the right palms in Washington, and crucially also help deliver a Midterm victory to the Party.
Enron collapsed right after the 2000 election and before the 2002 primaries. Their outgoing CEO and chairman of the board was co-chairman of Bush's campaign and a personal friend of Bush Sr. and Dick Cheney. One major reason he was retiring was moving into politics, being mentioned as being on the short list for cabinet appointments (Treasury or Energy).
The chief US economics advisor and the chief US trade representative under W. were Enron advisory board members (well, they had to resign from the board when appointed by W.).
That is absolutely not true. Enron leadership had very close ties with the Bush family and the Bush administration in general [0]. They arguably are one of the major reason why the California recall election of 2003 happened, and why Schwarzenegger replaced Davis.
Enron was arguably better at influencing politics than SBF and FTX which allowed them to run unchecked for far longer.
> The level of regulatory capture and open corruption in the US today vs 2001 is also incomparable. It's functionally two different countries.
"Tell me you weren't alive in 2001 without telling me that you weren't alive in 2001." Such a rosy depiction of the Bush II years is entirely detached from history.
I would love to know the mystical mechanism by which a legislative representative spreads money to federal and state AGs, and then how those AGs spread money around their respective offices, without any of this ever leaking out. And then you have a partisan angle so yeah, whither the Republican state AGs?
SBF and the gang aren’t going to be able to con more people, the companies are in bankruptcy now so their books are being poured over, and there’s multiple state and federal investigations ongoing. Presumably the Bahamas has some sort of law enforcement system as well. Just because the US hasn’t descended on the Bahamas with apache helicopters in a month or two doesn’t mean “they got away with it”, people need to stop being so hysterical.
> Yes, but Enron forgot to grease the right palms in Washington, and crucially also help deliver a Midterm victory to the Party.
Sam recently said on an interview that he donated just as much to the Republican party using dark money channels. I doubt that's going to save him at this point.
The whole point of dark money is that it's anonymous.. in either case one of his staunchest defenders in congress is the #3 guy in the GOP who received millions of dollars of support from FTX on the record. Rep. Emmer also tried to prevent the SEC from investigating FTX so maybe everyone can stop pretending that it's exclusively a Democrat problem?
Enron was basically a pyramid scheme at the end. It collapsed because eventually you cannot expand anymore but also cannot justify your lack of cash flow without expanding. Greasing of palms MIGHT have let some people avoid prison or even prosecution. But the game was over because it was just too big to NOT fail...
