Re: The Enron-Cheney-Taliban Connection? AlterNet

["Charles Jannuzi" <jannuzi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>.  And I haven't heard anything
> about Enron having a piece of the oil concessions.  Enron, furthermore,
has had
> for the last two or three years a strategy of not owning hard assets.
They had
> been burned on almost all their investments -- water, electric power, etc.

Enron was more like the sort of predator that would end up owning a stake in
a company because it knew beforehand that company was going to get a
concession or a contract.

The non-Russian route for Caspian oil and gas has been on the drawing boards
for a lot longer than 2-3 years. Perhaps Enron wasn't a new player in the
endeavour, just a confused one (but you are right, better to think otherwise
til evidence is given).

Afghanistan has always been a strategic piece of real estate for someone,
this is just a new twist on why the US would have detailed battle plans for
bombing and invading it (the US probably still has battle plans for a
Russian tank invasion of western europe!).

> They were divesting and wanted to be a commodity trader, like ADM, rather
than
> a producer of anything.

This was the company that in the late 90s said it's pipelines were going to
be information corridors and then later admitted there were no fiber cables
with its pipelines (though it later bought them with the money it raised).

 Enron did have a finger in a lot of pies and perhaps
> it will turn out they had some involvement, but as of now I think not.

I don't think there is a disagreement here. Notice how I emphasized their
investments as venture capital, not as oil and gas developers. It would be
interesting to see where the 300 million dollars in the Carlyle Energy fund
came from in the past two years. Perhaps some Enroners bailing out and going
where the SEC can't?

I agree with you; you can't figure out what's really going on by just making
simple connections (though the interlocking boards of so many of these firms
make you wonder which is worse: these guys doing their jobs with all the
conflicts of interest, or them not doing their jobs at all).

Charles Jannuzi