Arnold Destroys the World

While Enron is (thankfully) no longer around, the effects of their fraud are still being felt by the former employees, shareholders and the people of California.
That didn’t stop Arnold from making a buck though.
From a variety of sources:
“It turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they carried off.” Read more here.
While Arnold quietly made backroom deals to line his pockets, Californians were subjected to the reign of DaTerminator and Enron made off with billions in ill-gotten gains.
Funny how the Bush Administration and the FERC favored Enron over California, even while this information came to light. Even funnier is how much money Enron gave to get Bush elected.

From mindfully.org, consider this:
“The Enron albatross isn’t unique to the actor. Richard Riordan, then another prominent GOP gubernatorial hopeful, attended the same Lay-led Beverly Hills hotel room strategy session as did Schwarzenegger and felonious former junk bond king Michael Milken, Lay’s mentor.

According to multiple accounts, Lay called the May 11, 2001, meeting to shore up support for electrical rate deregulation from California Republican powerhouses. The meeting came three days after the Golden State suffered its third round of manufactured electrical blackouts, which only ended when the state agreed to finance continued power purchases through the country’s largest-ever bond issue.

According to later press accounts, Lay had sought Schwarzenegger’s and Riordan’s support for his deregulation campaign since both men were widely perceived as probable Republican gubernatorial candidates.

Enron and sundry other energy traders picked the pockets of California consumers and looted the California treasury through artificial price-inflating schemes carrying such sonorous handles as “Death Star” and “Get Shorty.”

The media have also been notably reluctant to report on the simple fact that the state’s fiscal crisis was largely caused by folks like Schwarzenegger’s host at that private Beverly Hills confab two years ago. Huge electrical bills brought by state and federal deregulation of the utility industry were the main culprit the fruits of laws pushed through by an acting governor-turned-president named Reagan and a non-acting governor named Pete Wilson, both members of Arnold’s own party.

Until Enron imploded, Lay was a favorite of Republican politicians in search of cash. He was a close friend and major supporter of another Republican governor-turned-president, George W. Bush, who affectionately called the Enron boss “Kenny Boy.”
Most people would consider this, at least, unethical. Just one of the many horror stroies we will be able to repeat to our grandchildren when they ask how our generation was able to mess up so many things.