Wendy Lee Gramm (born 1945) is chairman of the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University. She is also the wife of United States Senator Phil Gramm.

Wendy Lee Gramm was born in Hawaii and is of Korean and 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, Wendy Gramm generally calls for deregulation of the energy industry. She served on the Board of Directors of Enron before its collapse; Enron had been a financial backer of the Mercatus Center.

Previously, Wendy Gramm held several positions in the Reagan Administration, including heading the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In this position, which Gramm held from 1988 to 1993, she had an additional tie to Enron: at one point, the CFTC exempted from regulation Enron trading in energy derivatives.

From 1985 to 1988, Gramm was head of the Office of Management and Budget's Information and Regulatory Affairs. In 2002, the OMB drew up a "hit list" of existing federal environmental regulations it believes should be changed or rescinded. Of these, 44 had been suggested by the Mercatus Center.

Gramm also serves as chair of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and a director of the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative women's group. She has sat on the boards of Enron, Iowa Beef Processors, Invesco Funds, Longitude, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and State Farm Insurance Companies.

References

• Wendy Gramm (http://www.mercatus.org/people.php/35.html?menuid=), Mercatus Center
• Article about Gramm (http://goldsea.com/WW/Grammwendy/grammwendy.html) from goldsea.com
• Critical report (http://www.cleanairtrust.org/villain.0102.html) on Wendy Gramm from the Clean Air Trust, January 2002

This article uses content from the SourceWatch article on Wendy Lee Gramm (http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Wendy_Lee_Gramm) under the terms of the GFDL.