Phil Gramm: It's The Economy, You Moron!

First of all, who is this guy? His name keeps cropping up in news stories about the economy, and more recently with his "nation of whiners" comment, but they've kind of stopped explaining how he's connected to it all.

Gramm is McCain's national campaign general co-chair and chief economic policy advisor. He is a former professor of economics at Texas A&M University. He then served seven years as a congressman, followed by three terms as senator (R-TX). After he left the senate, Gramm went on to a lobbying job with Swiss Bank UBS, one of the worlds largest managers of private wealth, where he is also a vice president.

THE ENRON LOOPHOLE
As chairman of the senate banking committee, Gramm wrote and passed deregulatory legislation in several industries. One of these laws deregulated energy commodity trading, essentially allowing energy trading to escape federal oversight. This resulted in the sharp rise in energy costs California saw soon thereafter. Energy-trading company Enron collapsed as a consequence of its own deregulated energy trading. The impact of the "Enron loophole" is felt every day at the gas pump: it contributes to inflated energy prices for American consumers by encouraging speculation in the energy markets.

Incidentally, wife Wendy Gramm persuaded her fellow comissioners on the Commodity Futures Trading Comission to agree to a rule exempting electronic trading of energy futures from oversight. As soon as she resigned from the commission, she joined the audit committee of the Enron board of directors. She, along with other Enron board members, participated in a $13 million settlement for insider trading, having sold stock early in the company's decline. Seriously, you just can't make this stuff up.

Coming up next: Phil Gramm and the mortgage crisis.