Mike, Obviously the writer didn't know that energy and food don't matter in the new economy. We can all operate on "DRAM"amine and eat "chips." <g>
This is one of those "I told ya so" situations. The deregulation of utilities has made them non-utile. As smaller, non-monopoly players, they can no longer demand concessions and guaranteed contracts from energy suppliers. Nor do they feel the need to fall on their swords to provide energy for the fickle consumer when it is not profitable to do so.
If the winter is a bad one, and it may well be, we may see a reversal of a lot of the silly "let the market work" rhetoric of the past decade and a return to demanding that the govt. make certain that basics are provided at reasonable cost.
In the meantime, this is both good and bad news for natural gas providers. Good in that prices are high. Bad in that the public, which felt sorry for them two years ago, is beginning to remember how much they hated them back in 1981. So, higher energy costs and poor utility performance is a net negative for any co. that actually produces stuff. That includes more tech cos. than many believe, though there are still a lot that only produce fluff (but the "stuff" people are the customers of the "fluff" people, so they do not escape unscathed). And it may be positive for energy providers in the short term. It is definitely a positive, until it is resolved, for drillers and alternative energy purveyors. The trick is not to get caught up into thinking that a short term imbalance is a long term trend, as many did during the recent tech mania. |
