Posted by WTO Watch Qld on March 2, 2002 at 18:55:03:
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
. "I am not very comfortable with the fact there are
only five big accounting firms in the world. Collusion among five is
easier than collusion among 25."
Frits Bolkestein, European Internal Market Commissioner, interview with Financial Times
"You must cut costs ruthlessly by 50 to 60 percent. Depopulate. Get rid of
people. They gum up the works."
Jeffrey Skilling, Enron's longtime president who bailed just months before
the company's ruin, at a 1997 industry conference.
1) COMING EVENTS
2) CALLS TO ACTION
3) THE MAI RISES AGAIN
3) FOCUS
a) Global Accounting...GATS.........and Arthur Anderson
b) Globalisation...Breeding Ground for Future Enrons
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1) COMING EVENTS
GATS___A CHANCE TO LEARN MORE
The Qld division of the NTEU invites you to a seminar to learn more about the GATS--the General Agreement on Trade in Services-- and other WTO issues.
GATS has come to symbolise the global rush by business to remove public funding from even the most basic of education and health services.
The seminar will be conducted by Ted Murphy, who has just finished a secondment to the ACTU researching the GATS.
Monday night March 11th
7.00pm
Conservatorium of Music
Room 1.39
Russell St, Sth Brisbane
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WOOMERA 2002
draw the connections and make the journey.
For more information go to www.woomera2002.com
email infodesk@woomera2002.com
ring 3844 1447
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The Brisbane Social Forum
WHERE: Brisbane Powerhouse, 119 Lamington St New Farm
WHEN:9am-7.30pm Saturday and Sunday,16th & 17th March
The Brisbane Social Forum is an exciting opportunity for people wishing to
discuss issues of peace, globalisation, justice and environmental
sustainability. It will be an open space of ideas, issues and alternative
visions, created for, and by your participation. The forum will consist of
workshops, discussions and performances. We welcome your involvement to help
create an inspiring and powerful forum for social change.
THEMES:
The broad themes for the forum are environmental and social justice,
globalisation, peace, treaty, community, labour rights and sustainability.
PARTICIPANTS:
All groups and people interested in issues of globalisation, social and
environmental justice are encouraged to attend and contribute their ideas,
workshops and experience.
Michael Albert, co-founder of Boston based Z Magazine (www.zmag.org) will
present a keynote address. Michael has been an activist for over 30 years
and has written extensively on movement building and alternatives to
"capitalism" and "globalisation". Michael recently addressed the World
Social Forum in Porto Allegre, Brasil and presented his visions for a
participatory economy (Parecon). His most recent book is called "Moving
Forward: program for a participatory economy".
Christine Richards, Australiasian Editor of New Internationalist Magazine;
Luke Anderson UK genetic engineering activist and author of Genetic
Engineering Food and the Environment; Kerry Nettle, Senator Elect of The
Australian Greens and Sharon Beder, author of Global Spin: the corporate
assault on environmentalism will also participate, conducting workshops and
discussions.
TICKET INFO:
Tickets are on sale now at the powerhouse box office! ph: 3358 8600 $50
(waged) $25 (concession). Prepaid tickets only. $5 working volunteer tickets
are available by contacting info@brisbanesocialforum.org Tickets include all
performances, workshops and plenary sessions as well as Saturday and Sunday
Lunch.
For more info visit www.brisbanesocialforum.org
or phone Alison 0407 150 728
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The 2002 Walk Against Want is at the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens on
Sunday March 24th at 3pm.
· Free-call 1800 034 034 or visit www.caa.org.au/walk to register for the
Walk Against Want.
· Click on this Poster Link http://www.caa.org.au/walk/media/10x2a.pdf
print off a copy and stick it on your fridge at home and/or work.
· Click on the Pledge Sheet Link
www.caa.org.au/walk/get_involved/pledgeform.pdf print off a copy and start
collecting sponsors straight away!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Brisbane IndyMedia site is finally up and functioning!!!
Go to www.brisbane.indymedia.org.au and check it out.
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WORLD WATER DAY ................................MARCH 22ND
WATCH THIS SPACE
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2) CALLS TO ACTION
LETTER TO BARRICK GOLD RE GOLD MINE AT LAKE COWAL
Please email the letter below or a modified version to:
vborg@barrick.com, greg_lang@homestake.com.au with a cc to
ruthr@ozemail.com.au, bob.carr@www.nsw.gov.au,
eddie.obeid@parliament.nsw.gov.au, D.Kemp.MP@aph.gov.au,
bob.debus@parliament.nsw.gov.au, marrickville@parliament.nsw.gov.au
Or post to the address shown. Thanks!
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Mr Peter Munk, Chairman
Barrick Gold Corporation
Royal Bank Plaza - Suite 2700
Toronto, Canada M5J 2J3
Dear Mr Munk,
Please halt the gold mining project planned for Lake Cowal, New South
Wales, Australia.
The Australian Heritage Commission has suggested that the NSW
government consider the Lake Cowal region for RAMSAR listing. Lake
Cowal is included in Australia's Register of the National Estate and
its Directory of Important Wetlands. The National Trust of Australia
(NSW) has also listed Lake Cowal as a 'Landscape Conservation Area.'
In fact, Lake Cowal is habitat for a high diversity of waterbirds.
With 172 species of birds recorded including migratory waders
protected under international migratory bird treaties such as the the
China-Australia Migratory Birds Agreement, (CAMBA)and the Japan-
Australia Migratory Birds Agreement, (JAMBA).
It is unacceptable to risk cyanide spills, acid mine drainage and
heavy metals, to name but a few of the possible consequences, in
these important, sensitive wetlands. A spill of cyanide and arsenic
laced wastewater could severely damage the entire wetland and related
waterways, killing fish, birdlife and farm stock. Drinking water
could be severely damaged. With the region being prone to floods,
these sorts of risks are vastly increased.
We support the Aboriginal traditional owners of Lake Cowal/The Bland
who have declared their opposition to the Lake Cowal gold mine
project. It is our understanding that Homestake/Barrick and their
predecessors have not properly consulted with many Aboriginal
traditional owners from the region.
Homestake/Barrick should reconsider this undertaking. We believe that
there are alternative means of revenue generation possible for this
region that would benefit both land and people.
The environmental and human rights record of Homestake/Barrick has
already been marred by a number of infamous incidents. Examples are
the 1997 civil suit filed by the US Department of Justice, the State
of South Dakota and the Cheyenne River Sioux against Homestake for
heavy metal pollution of Whitewood Creek, South Dakota; the May 1998
spill of cyanide-laced tailings from the Homestake Mine into Gold Run
Creek, South Dakota; and current allegations against Barrick in Chile
and Tanzania.
We urge you to work towards restoring your corporations' reputation
by abandoning the Lake Cowal project forthwith. To proceed further
would be to engage in a costly and long drawn out conflict with
environmental defenders of NSW and Australia.
Clean water is more precious than gold.
Please advise us of your decision at your soonest convenience.
Yours respectfully,
YOUR NAME
YOUR GROUP or AFFILIATION if you have one
CITY/STATE/COUNTRY (Include full address if you would like a reply)
Rainforest Information Centre
Box 368, Lismore 2480 NSW
(02) 66213294
http://rainforestinfo.org.au/
ruthr@ozemail.com.au
See the Lake Cowal campaign at http://rainforestinfo.org.au/gold/lakec.html
----------------------
3) The MAI Rises Again
(ED The inclusion of investment within the WTO should set the alarm bells ringing. Those who were involved in the fight against the discredited MAI will be somewhat surprised to learn of Australia's position. Apparently they haven't learned any lessons from the past!)
Washington Trade Daily
Volume 11, Numbers 41 and 42 Tuesday and Wednesday, February 26 and
27, 2002
Geneva - Members of the World Trade Organization appear divided
over how to handle the so-called "Singapore" issues of trade and investment,
competition policy, trade facilitation and transparency in government
procurement - after last year's Doha ministerial meeting denied a strong
negotiating mandate (WTD, 11/16/01).
A group of industrialized countries - led by the United States and the
European Union - are insisting on convening "dedicated sessions" to embark
on focused study programs in the four areas.
But developing countries - including Brazil, Pakistan, Paraguay and
several African countries - maintain that the Doha Development Agenda
includes no mandate for either special or dedicated sessions.
The Doha Declaration spelled out that existing WTO groups would
continue to work on the focused elements in each area and that ministers
would take a decision at next year's ministerial conference to hold full-scale
negotiations on the basis of an "explicit" consensus.
At the WTO on Monday, the United States, the European Union,
Chile and Australia pressed hard for dedicated sessions so negotiations
could begin next year. But Pakistan, Brazil, Guatemala and Paraguay
opposed holding any special sessions.
====================================================
a) ED: Accounting was one of the first sectors for which GATS rules were developed, because it was felt that global businesses needed global accounting services.
Australia has listed accounting on its schedule of specific GATS commitments for unrestricted market access across three of the four modes identified. That meams that foreign based accounting firms are able to supply accounting services in Australia a) by having a commercial presence in Australia (setting up shop here) b) by providing a cross border service ( providing services from outside the country eg electronically) and c) by sending Australian accountants abroad.
The Australian government has waived its right to place any restrictions on foreign accounting firms that do not also apply to local firms.
Any foreign firms operating here are able bring in and take out any funds connected with the running of their businesses.
Perhaps if you know any accountants, you might like to ask them if they know they have been deregulated?
Of the 40 largest accounting networks globally, the Big 5 account for 77% of accounting services. PriceWaterhouseCooper is by far the largest of the Big 5, followed by Arthur Anderson (of HIH and Enron fame).The four biggest are based in the US with the fifth in the Netherlands.
Of the 100 largest firms worldwide (measured by market value at the end of 1999), the Big 5 accounting firms audited 98 of them. Hence the quote at the top of the bulletin.
If anyone has a particular interest in accounting, the following may be of interest. In particular, the wish list is informative.
Reducing the Barriers to International Trade in Accounting Services
Lawrence J. White
The AEI Press, Publisher for the American Enterprise Institute,
WASHINGTON, D.C., 2001
Full report at: The European Commission on Wednesday launched an outspoken attack on In an interview with the Financial Times, Frits Bolkestein, European He also warned that the small number of global accountancy firms "I have asked accountants: was [Enron] just hanky-panky or did the The intervention of Mr Bolkestein, whose responsibilities include Last year, the European Commission approved plans to require most ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Globalization Breeding Ground for Future Enrons By John Nichols / The Nation Feb. 19, 2002 -- The mandarins of corporate capital continued to Much of the US media and all but a few members of Congress continue Enron's business model, which until recently was taught in business "Enron is the model for globalization, a model for how the whole Even for serious readers of the US financial press, it may come as a In Geneva, where the WTO is headquartered, Enron is known as a sharp- The lines of connection between the Bush family, the Bush campaign And Enron's domestic activities are only a part of the story. To Enron was big on writing the rules. Before its collapse, it held a Eizenstat's attempt at humor was actually a blunt statement of The loosening of rules governing sectors of the global economy in Enron's crusading globalism extended the corporation's operations Once borders opened, once privatized industries were put up for sale That is a debatable point. When officials in the Indian state of Enron's tough line with the locals caused complaints from Brazil to In all, according to research compiled by Friends of the Earth, OPIC "The Enron scandal exposes the reality that both the Ex-Im Bank and No matter what sort of globalization is being debated, Enron has for Enron's determination to tip the balance within the Democratic Party The description of that obscure US diplomat in Maputo could easily be Enron didn't merely use the US government as an agent for its global If such behavior now has Enron squirming, Bernie Sanders thinks this Noting that US law bars foreign corporations and their domestic Surely, these responses to the scandal are welcome. But it's not © The Nation, 2002. All rights reserved. ====================================================
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Accounting rules in US under attack from Europe
Francesco Guerrera and Peter Norman in Brussels
Published: February 20 2002 20:32 | Last Updated: February 21 2002
15:31
US accounting rules, calling on US regulators to scrap its accounting
standards in the wake of the Enron collapse in favour of an
alternative system to be used in Europe.
internal market commissioner, said the Enron scandal was due to more
than "hanky-panky" at the energy trading giant and had been partly
facilitated by the "cookery book" approach of US accounting rules.
could increase the danger of collusion among auditors.
particular nature of US GAAP [Generally Accepted Accounting
Principles] enter into the whole game? The answer is yes, it had
something to do with the rules of US GAAP," the commissioner said.
Europe's financial services markets, will be seen as a direct attack
on the US regulatory authorities, which have so far refused to allow
companies listed in New York to use International Accounting
Standards, the rival system to GAAP.
Europe-based companies to use by 2005 the more flexible IAS, which
emphasises "substance over form" in auditors' inspection of the
accounts. Some 300 European companies that use US GAAP will have
until 2007 to adapt to the new system.
b) (ED: this is long, but well worth reading. It illustrates the influence of big business in the WTO negotiations, the predatory nature of the corporations in the developing world and their influence on the political process.)
preach the gospel of free markets and economic globalization at the
World Economic Forum in New York, but a more traditional preacher
reminded them that the burgeoning Enron scandal ought to give the
shapers of the new world economic order pause. "There's a big
question mark over capitalism today," the Rev. George Carey,
Archbishop of Canterbury, informed the assembled CEOs and political
hangers-on. "It's one word and it's 'Enron.' And what is that
challenge? Capitalism has to act within boundaries."
to fixate on the domestic debacles--from lost pensions to lax
regulations--that the collapse of Enron has exposed. But the
Archbishop's invocation served as a reminder that the Enron scandal
is not merely an American affair. The rise and fall of Enron is very
much the story of a model global corporation gone awry. It is also an
apt illustration of the consequences of the rush to embrace a
corporate-sponsored template for economic liberalization: from
multilateral free-trade pacts that supersede domestic regulations to
privatization, deregulation, International Monetary Fund-ordered
"structural adjustments" of national economies and the corrupting
interplay of corporate campaign contributions and policy-making that
is no longer just a US phenomenon.
schools around the world, did not respect boundaries. Its global
reach, powered by as much as $2.4 billion in loans backed by US
taxpayers and aided by barrier-breaking "reforms" pushed by the World
Trade Organization, made the Houston-based corporation not merely the
seventh-largest in the United States but the sixteenth-largest in the
world. Before its empire began to unravel last fall, Enron was
regularly featured on Global Finance magazine's annual list of the
"world's best global companies." Enron was a globalizer on a grand
scale, its grubby big hands stretching from Houston to London to
Bombay to Maputo to La Paz. Forget about trying to chart the maze of
Enron's 874 "offshore partnerships"; the corporation bragged quite
openly about "business units" (Enron Americas, Enron Europe, Enron
Australia, Enron South America, Enron Japan, to name but a few) that
traded in the world's natural gas, crude oil, metals, plastics,
fertilizers, forest products, lumber, steel and, ominously, the
weather. The shorthand description of Enron in most US media reports
continues to refer to the corporation as a "Texas energy giant." But
that does not begin to describe the conglomerate that, in addition to
being the planet's largest energy trader, had a hand in virtually
every economic sector--in every country--that a corporate jet could
reach. If, as Global Reach authors Richard Barnet and Ronald Muller
predicted a quarter-century ago, "the men who run the global
corporations are the first in history with the organization,
technology, money and ideology to make a credible try at managing the
world as an integrated unit," then Enron throughout the 1990s tried
harder. However, the company was not always credible--let alone
credit-worthy.
neoliberal ideology forms a business model. Here is a company that is
huge in America, huge in Canada, it's all over Europe, all over
India, all over South America, all over the world," says Darren
Puscas, a researcher with Canada's Polaris Institute, which began
last year to study the company's campaign to promote privatization
and deregulation of public services in developing countries. "Enron
is a scandal in the United States now. But it has been a scandal in
other countries for a long time."
surprise that Fortune's "most innovative company in America" is one
of the most controversial companies in the world. Only in reports on
human rights and environmental abuses produced by groups like Human
Rights Watch, Amnesty International, CorpWatch, Multinational Monitor
and Friends of the Earth could Americans get a hint until recently
that Global Finance's "best company" award winner did not achieve
that honor for being a good corporate citizen.
elbowed advocate for liberalizing rules governing the trade in
"services," a move that anticorporate campaigners say is designed to
open the way for the privatization and deregulation of health,
education, energy, water, welfare and postal services. In India Enron
is known as a partner in the decade-long, still incomplete
development of a $2.9 billion power plant project so controversial
that it spawned a nationwide protest movement and upset the balance
of political power in the region surrounding the facility [see
Arundhati Roy, "Shall We Leave It to the Experts?" ]. In
Britain Enron lobbied successfully for energy-policy shifts and, with
approvals from Tony Blair's Labour government, recently took
ownership of a huge privatized water utility, Wessex Water--moves
that are now under intense scrutiny by that country's media and
political opposition. In Germany Enron swept in with schemes to
corner newly deregulated electricity markets. In Mozambique, with the
aid of a friendly US ambassador, Enron grabbed control of an oil
pipeline project from a government under pressure from the
International Monetary Fund to forge public-private partnerships. In
Argentina it brought high-level political pressure down on successive
governments until, finally, Enron was granted approval to construct a
natural gas pipeline from that country to Chile. The pressure
included a 1988 call to a Cabinet minister from George W. Bush, the
son of the then-Vice President of the United States.
and Enron may explain why the White House's spin machine is
struggling to wedge the Enron collapse story into a "business
scandal" box that would conveniently exempt the political class from
the stain. True, Enron is a business story: How could the biggest
bankruptcy in US business history be otherwise? But it's also a
political story: Enron gave $6 million in political contributions
over a decade, and its CEO, the largest career contributor to George
W. Bush's campaigns, has been exposed as having exploited his
connections to name Bush Administration regulators, to shape its
energy policies and to block moves to regulate the offshore tax
havens Enron exploited.
limit discussion of Enron to them is to miss the most dramatic
lessons of this burgeoning scandal. "If you want to know where
economic globalization along the lines cheered on by the WTO, the
IMF, the World Bank, George W. Bush and Tony Blair is headed, look at
Enron. Globalization has created an international no man's land where
businesses survive by engaging in financial practices that no
responsible nation-state would permit," says Tony Benn, Britain's
former minister of industry. "When you allow corporations to write
their own rules in the global marketplace, which is what has
essentially been the case in recent years, you will see unimaginable
abuses."
place on the board of the National Foreign Trade Council, which
worked with the WTO to forge trade policy. It sponsored the 1999
World Services Congress in Atlanta, where, Polaris Institute
researchers say, the services industry set its agenda for a new round
of WTO negotiations. Along with its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen,
Enron was at the center of the shadowy US Coalition of Service
Industries' campaign to negotiate General Agreement on Trade in
Services (GATS) schemes that remove restrictions on international
commerce involving services. The GATS negotiations, which have been
going on for two years under the aegis of the WTO, were described at
the World Economic Forum by former Clinton Administration Treasury
Department official Stuart Eizenstat as a move to "allow [Arthur]
Andersen to export its accounting services to the world."
reality. The first rules for a profession developed by the WTO as
part of the GATS negotiations were for the accounting sector--and the
rules were indeed shaped with a big assist from Arthur Andersen. So
what might appropriately be dubbed "Enron accounting" is already in
the process of going global.
which Enron was involved was a long-term corporate priority. During
the go-go years of business expansion in the 1990s, the company
scoured the planet in search of opportunities in countries that were
embracing--sometimes willingly, often under pressure from the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund--"market-oriented reforms."
These public-policy shifts allowed multinational corporations to buy
formerly public utilities and capitalize on the lifting of
traditional regulations--moves that opened the door to aggressive
global corporations like Enron. Forged in the last years of Ronald
Reagan's presidency by an ambitious former Pentagon economist named
Ken Lay, Enron was a corporation designed to shape and then master
the new economy of the post-cold war era. Lay preached what Britain's
Independent newspaper described as a "deregulation-happy philosophy"
with such passion that The Economist would eventually describe Enron
as "an evangelical cult" in which Lay was the messiah.
into virtually every sector of every economy worth owning a piece of,
using all the tricks in the corporate globalizer's handbook. "The
thing that you have to understand about Enron is this: They have
taken advantage of every opportunity globalization has presented
them. They have been in the forefront of pushing deregulation and
privatization, pushing for access to markets around the world, using
pressure from the US government to open trade," says the Polaris
Institute's Puscas.
and once sectors of economies were deregulated, Enron moved
aggressively to gain advantage. Business Week explained that for
companies like Enron, "the approach to globalization then was
brutally simple: get in fast, strike megadeals with top officials,
and watch the profits roll in." Initially, it seemed, the model was
working. Enron was often credited with putting new technologies to
work in the service of its rapid expansion. But as much as the
corporation benefited from the rise of the Internet, a case can be
made that its bottom line gained at least as much from the opening of
markets around the planet to swashbuckling corporate adventurers, who
brought Texas-style business practice to Australia, Brazil and
Croatia. Between 1998 and 2001 Enron's foreign revenues increased
from 7 percent to 23 percent of the company's total revenues--adding
$22.9 billion in 2001 to the coffers of a company that, it turns out,
needed every cent it could get its hands on. Enron executives
embraced the gospel of globalization with a fervor that portrayed
free trade, deregulation, privatization and other planks in the
neoliberal platform as the necessary and inevitable face of progress.
"We are on the side of the angels," declared former Enron CEO Jeffrey
Skilling. "People want to have open, competitive markets."
Maharashtra took advantage of a recent relaxation of India's
restrictions on foreign investment to invite a joint venture led by
Enron to build a power plant south of Bombay, nearby villagers were
certainly not clamoring for the "open, competitive markets" Enron was
offering. They worried that the Dabhol power-plant project would
destroy their livelihoods and their environment. When they launched a
movement to stop it, leading activists were dragged from their homes
and beaten by Enron-paid "police" in what Human Rights Watch
describes as "serious, sometimes brutal human rights violations
carried out on behalf of the state's and the company's interests."
"Enron is now being widely accused of arrogance and lack of
transparency, but the people of Dabhol have known that all along,"
says Arvind Ganesan, who directs the group's business and
human rights program. "Enron was complicit in human rights abuse in
India for several years."
Mozambique. And despite the near-euphoric reporting on Enron
in the US press during the 1990s, its projects drew skeptical
responses from an institution not famous for saying no to
multinational corporations: the World Bank. Enron came to the bank for financing of
its Indian project, only to be told it was "not economically
viable." That would have stopped the unpopular initiative were it not
for Enron's connections with two deep-pockets lenders: the US
Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export-Import Bank.
The taxpayer-funded OPIC granted a $100 million loan
guarantee for the Dabhol project early on; and at a critical stage in
the plant's troubled construction, the taxpayer-funded Ex-Im Bank
provided Enron with almost $300 million in loan guarantees for the
project.
and the Ex-Im Bank loaned Enron $2.4 billion for its international
projects. Even after twenty-five members of Congress signed a letter
asking OPIC not to finance an Enron pipeline that cut through
tropical forests in Brazil, the corporation still got the loan
guarantees. Now that Enron is bankrupt, US taxpayers could find
themselves swallowing the debt. With its joint-venture partners,
General Electric and Bechtel, Enron has filed claims for $200 million
in compensation for losses in India. OPIC officials say the energy
giant's bankruptcy could leave US taxpayers liable for as much as
$1 billion.
OPIC are financing precisely the wrong sort of corporate
behavior at home and abroad," says Representative Bernie Sanders.
"They are providing corporate welfare to companies that harm
workers in the United States and harm communities and the environment
overseas--as the Indian power-plant case illustrates. This
really is one of the most distressing examples of how our government
promotes the sort of globalization that does no one any good."
a decade sought to bend the discourse to its advantage. The
company was a leading corporate advocate for Congressional
ratification of NAFTA in 1993 and the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade in 1994, as well as proposals to normalize trade relations with
China and to grant Presidents Clinton and Bush fast-track
authority to secretly negotiate a Free Trade Area of the Americas.
When Houston-area House member Craig Washington rejected
the corporate pressure and voted against NAFTA, Enron chief Ken Lay
helped recruit a 1994 Democratic primary foe, Sheila Jackson
Lee, led Enron employees in contributing $24,000 to Jackson Lee's
campaign and helped her collect $600,000 from Houston's
business community and other givers. Jackson Lee's spending
overwhelmed Washington, who was defeated.
on trade issues extended to its generous funding of the New
Democrat Network, which advances the pro-free trade line of Senator
Joe Lieberman, a key Enron investigator on Capitol Hill. While
Enron's contributions to 186 House members and 71 senators increased
its influence in Congress, the company is broadly seen as
having gotten the biggest bang for its campaign bucks in presidential
races. Close ties to the George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill
Clinton and George W. Bush administrations--with their parallel
ideologies on global trade and economic issues--proved a
tremendous boon for Enron as the corporation went global. Former
President Bush's close personal connections to former Argentine
President Carlos Menem are cited in that country as the explanation
for why the Enron pipeline project was approved by Menem in
1989, before economic feasibility studies were completed. The Clinton
Administration threatened to cancel development aid to
Mozambique if the country did not accept the plan to have Enron
construct a pipeline to South Africa. "Their diplomats, especially
[US embassy deputy chief] Mike McKinley, pressured me to sign a deal
that was not good for Mozambique," says former natural
resources minister John Kachamila. "[McKinley] was not a neutral
diplomat. It was as if he was working for Enron."
applied to the current Vice President of the United States.
The Bush Administration is doing everything in its power to cloak
details of Dick Cheney's meetings with Enron executives. But there
is no question that the energy task force chaired by Cheney altered
its report to recommend that "the President direct the
Secretaries of State and Energy to work with India's Ministry of
Petroleum and Natural Gas to help India maximize its domestic oil
and gas production." Americans might question what Indian natural gas
production has to do with US energy policy. Noting that
Enron is seeking to force the Maharashtra State Electricity Board to
pay it $64 million as part of a buyout deal, Representative Henry
Waxman explains that the recommendation "benefited Enron by formally
enlisting two Cabinet secretaries in Enron's conflict with the
Indian government." It wasn't the only benefit Enron got. An e-mail
sent by a National Security Council aide indicates that Cheney
raised the issue of the Enron dispute in a meeting last June with
Sonia Gandhi, widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and
leader of India's opposition Congress Party. Additional e-mails
obtained by the New York Daily News indicate that the State and
Treasury departments pushed Enron's agenda with their Indian
counterparts, as did successive ambassadors to India.
ambitions; it invested directly. Ralf Schaefer, spokesman for a
German competitor, RWE Trading, says that in its international
dealings Enron often prevailed because it "knew what to do on the
political side and what to do on the economic side." It spent $51,000
sponsoring events for Britain's Labour Party, including a dinner
attended by Prime Minister Blair--whose government angered
traditional constituencies in Britain's coal-mining regions by
backing Enron's request to lift a moratorium on new gas-fired power stations.
Blair aides denied a "cash for access" deal but were
undermined when former Enron Europe chair Ralph Hodge said it was
"custom and practice" to sponsor events to cozy up to political
leaders. Elsewhere Enron's behavior was more blatant; it acknowledges
spending $20 million on "educational gifts" in India.
one corporation's crisis could bring an end to the use of US-
backed loan guarantees to finance the sort of corporate globalization
that harms US and foreign workers. He is preparing a letter to
the chairman of the monetary policy and trade subcommittee, on which
he sits, calling for a hearing on the Ex-Im Bank's dealings
with Enron. "The Enron debacle gives us a chance to shed light on a
whole host of policy failures," says Sanders. "Clearly, Enron is
not the only company that should not have received loans backed by US
tax dollars. These were difficult issues to get people to pay
attention to before, but now there's an opening."
subsidiaries from contributing to US political campaigns, Colgate
University sociology professor Adam Weinberg, a co-founder of the
reform group Democracy Matters, asks, "At what point does a
firm like Enron cease to be a US firm?" Weinberg contends that the
inability to regulate donations by corporations with substantial
international interests provides an important new argument for
campaign finance reforms more sweeping than those contained in the
proposed McCain-Feingold bill.
enough to see Enron, or even its political patrons, called to
account here and abroad. The billion-dollar question is whether the
lessons of the Enron debacle will lead to a rethinking of the wild
ride into the uncharted territory of the global economy, where the
rules are written not by regulators but by the corporations that
profit from deregulation. "There has to be a concerted effort to
understand Enron not as an example of one company that has gone bad
but as an example of what happens in a bad system," says Tony Benn.
"Globalization as it is being implemented by the corporations
provides no protection against future Enrons. It is a recipe for more
Enrons, more scandals, more sleaze."
Terrie Templeton WTO Watch Qld gumbus@powerup.com.au