Wendy Lee Gramm

Wendy Lee Gramm (born January 10, 1945) is an American economist and former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for the Reagan administration. She is also the wife of former United States Senator Phil Gramm. Gramm has gained notoriety for her role in the Enron scandal. Early life Wendy Lee Gramm was born in Hawaii and is of Korean and Native Hawaiian ancestry. She received a B.A. degree in economics from Wellesley College in 1966 and a Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University in 1971. In her role at the Mercatus Center, Gramm generally called for deregulation of the energy industry. For eight years, Gramm taught in the Department of Economics at Texas A&M University and later served on the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents. Career Wendy Lee Gramm held several positions in the Reagan Administration: executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget's regulatory review office, director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Economics, head of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) from 1985 to 1988, and head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 to 1993. After a lobbying campaign from Enron, and a few days after the election of Bill Clinton in 1993 and Gramm was set to lose her chairmanship, the CFTC exempted Enron from regulation in trading of energy derivatives. Six days later, she resigned from CFTC and took a seat on the Enron Board of Directors and served on its Audit Committee. Her husband Phil Gramm's 1996 presidential bid was cut short by a political scandal arising from his past investments in the porn industry, which led the New York Post to nickname him "Porno Gramm".