Wendy Lee Gramm (born January 10, 1945) is an American economist who led the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during 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.
Her husband'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".
While on the board of directors, she received donations from Enron to support the Mercatus Center. According to Public Citizen, Enron paid between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary from 1993 to 2001.
In 1998, she declared "In my view, there are no systemic problems in the OTC derivatives market”.
Prior to George W. Bush's election, Phil Gramm introduced the Commodity Futures Modernization Act which deregulated the trading of derivatives. The remainder of the settlement was to be paid by insurance.
After Enron, she became head of the Regulatory Studies Program of the Mercatus Center. She expressed no regrets regarding the Enron debacle, which she considered a success. In 2011, she appeared on a television spot with her husband, calling on Texans to shoulder the burden of the economic crisis. On October 1, 2019, she resigned as the chairman of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Gramm also served as a director of the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative women's group. She has sat on the boards of Enron Corporation, Iowa Beef Processors, Invesco Funds, Longitude, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and State Farm Insurance Companies.
Ronald Reagan once described Gramm as "[his] favorite economist."
Personal life
Wendy Lee Gramm met her husband when she was interviewed by him as a Ph.D. student for a position at Texas A&M University. Phil Gramm, a senior professor three years older than Wendy, expressed his interest in her after the interview. Six weeks later, she arrived on campus, and they wed.
She has two sons: Jeff, who is in the indie-rock band Aden, and Marshall, a professor of economics at the Presbyterian-affiliated Rhodes College.