<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://www.clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/40e15f44-dccd-41a8-a442-7948c4e8dc97/D911E6C9-F583-48B5-9AA6-F15B85C7F749/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/09/exit-strategy-how-to-burn-the-speculators.html" href="http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/09/exit-strategy-how-to-burn-the-speculators.html" style="font-size: 11px;">www.motherjones.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/09/exit-strategy-how-to-burn-the-speculators.html">But thanks to Phil "nation of whiners" Gramm—the former Texas senator who was until recently John McCain's top economic adviser (see "<A href="http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/09/../07/foreclosure-phil.html">Foreclosure Phil</A>")—futures market regulation went to hell. Under the "Enron loophole" pushed through by Gramm in 2000, energy futures were allowed to escape all federal and state regulation. Gramm embedded that loophole in a surprise 262-page rider, drafted at the behest of Wall Street and Enron, in an 11,000-page appropriations bill on a Friday evening two days after the Supreme Court handed down its <I>Bush v. Gore</I> ruling and as Congress was rushing home for Christmas. In a separate bit of absurdity, in January 2006, the Intercontinental Exchange (<FONT class="acronym_smallcaps">ice</FONT>) of Atlanta, which trades benchmark US oil futures (West Texas Intermediate or <FONT class="acronym_smallcaps">wti</FONT>), came to be treated by the <FONT class="acronym_smallcaps">cftc</FONT> as a British market (the "London loophole") so that US regulators do not even track what is going on. (Even more surreal, the <FONT class="acronym_smallcaps">cftc</FONT> was going to allow trades of US oil futures </blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/D911E6C9-F583-48B5-9AA6-F15B85C7F749/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content6.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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