Bank Shot: The President Shafts Enron's Victims (by Robert L. Borosage at HuffPost)

Robert L. Borosage
Bank Shot: The President Shafts Enron's Victims


Wall Street's investment banks just got another step closer to making defrauding investors an accepted line of business. And Enron's employees who lost their pensions and the small investors who got fleeced in the Enron frauds just got shafted again -- this time at the urging of President George W. Bush.

Wall Street's most powerful investment banks and their friends in high places lobbied the U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement to reject the recommendation of the Securities and Exchange Commission that the Justice Department support defrauded investors in their appeal to the Supreme Court.

The case before the Supreme Court is called Stoneridge v Scientific-Atlanta, but the Court decision will directly impact the millions of victims of Enron's collapse -- and say much about the honesty of U.S. markets.

Briefs in support of the defrauded investors were filed by dozens of state attorneys general, by the Council of Institutional Investors and some of the nation's largest pension funds whose investments are at risk if Wall Street banks can concoct fraudulent schemes with impunity. Yet, in an unprecedented failure to meet his responsibilities to the public, Solicitor General Clement, who represents the United States before the Court, decided to punt.

Clement is not exactly a neutral party. He's a star of the right-wing bar. He clerked for Laurence Silberman and Antonin Scalia, among the most partisan and reactionary judges of our time. He served as an aide to Sen. John Ashcroft. He is an activist in the right-wing Federalist Society that seeks a return to 19th century jurisprudence.

And this spear-carrier for the right got his marching orders from the top. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson called directly and arranged for President Bush to weigh in personally.

The intervention of the treasury secretary and the president is hardly business as usual--particularly since neither Paulson nor President Bush are neutral observers either. Paulson is the former chairman of Goldman Sachs, a named defendant on the Enron case. And Enron and CEO "Kenny Boy" Lay were George Bush's leading supporters, contributing cash, the corporate plane, and fundraising energy to Bush's rise. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/bank-shot-the-president-_b_52039.html

Using tax payer money to retry lawsuits?