Keith Olbermann delivered a special report Wednesday on the ‘Enron loophole’ — a regulatory gap that is the single greatest cause of out-of-control gasoline prices — and how McCain’s leading advisors created that loophole and continue to defend it. People who deal in oil routinely use ‘futures’ — agreements in advance on prices and delivery dates — to deal with fluctuations in the market. However, deregulation has allowed commodity speculators to take over this system of futures and use it for their own profit, running up the price of oil in a speculative bubble. According to Olbermann, the story of $4 a gallon gas begins during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, when former Enron CEO Ken Lay started speculating on energy futures. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) gave Enron free rein, and when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, CFTC Chairwoman Wendy Gramm moved to lock in the commission’s informal position on Enron as official policy. Gramm then joined Enron’s board of directors, earning more than $900,000 over the next decade. In December 2000, during the chaos following the presidential election, Enron got a law passed containing an amendment known as the ‘Enron loophole,’ deregulating […]