Ben Bernanke’s supporters are warning that a Senate vote against the Fed chair will send financial markets tumbling.  Tim Geithner recently chimed in by telling Politico that markets would find a no vote “very troubling,” before saying that he was confident Bernanke would be reconfirmed. 

Geithner’s chief mentor, Robert Rubin, deployed the very same argument about Enron. Rubin, then a top executive at Citigroup, made an 11th hour call to the Treasury Department as part of a campaign by Enron and its creditors to stave off a looming ratings downgrade. The call was later criticized as an improper use of the former Treasury Secretary’s influence, but Rubin defended his actions, saying that he thought an Enron collapse would imperil world energy markets.

The financial apocalypse trick has been turned many times by Wall Street’s policy elites, but the Rubin example is especially apt today: the high-level campaign to avert Enron’s ratings downgrade in 2001 appears to have been coordinated by the same Federal Reserve official lobbying for Ben Bernanke’s reappointment.

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The same lobbyist that sold Washington on Enron is now touting Ben Bernanke. According to Politico, former Enron lobbyist Linda Robertson has been managing Bernanke’s confirmation effort on behalf of the Federal Reserve — coaching him through the process in much the same way she coached Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling through the Washington influence game.

Robertson played a key role in some of Enron’s most scandalous moments in the year prior to its collapse. For starters, she was at the center of negotiations involving the highly secretive energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.  A review of Enron email shows that Robertson guided Lay through pivotal meetings with Cheney and other officials, and actually authored the Enron memo and talking points that were later integrated into Cheney’s controversial energy plan.

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