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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Box-By-The-Riviera™ who wrote (69043)	2/18/2001 3:11:37 PM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

one would think a consistent message would be important when you are attempting to argue the value of a fiat currency in a world of fiat currencies... Yeah, one would think so, wouldn't one? But then again, I have the feeling we're dealing with first class amateurs here. What concerns me about the article you posted is that the confusion re; O'Neill's policy seems to have been cleared up by deciding that his response to the German press was the "candidly correct" response to the U$D issue. Hold on to your ass when U$D futures trading opens...when is that by the way given we have a market holiday Monday? Anyone? i had a day dream the other day, that suddenly it was announced that a sort of gold standard would be used to stablize world values...... and realized if that came true, i could buy an airplane or something and just hang out.... sigh! That was no day dream...lay off the glue bong man. I know you'll appreciate this-- siliconinvestor.com Feb 17 10:25am ET By David Howard Sinkman NEW YORK (Reuters) - However history judges California's electricity crisis, currently it looks like a whodunit with an illusive villain behind the sporadic power cuts plaguing the richest U.S. state the past two months. Consumer advocates and some politicians accuse the utilities, many of them out-of-state, of manipulating the newly deregulated power market by shutting down power plants for maintenance in order to drive up prices. The power producers vehemently deny these accusations, saying that the fault lies with old plants driven past breaking point by energy-hungry California. The plants have had to be taken out for urgent maintenance, the companies argue. Given these entrenched positions and a lack of public information, finding out what has really been going on is far from easy, analysts and consultants say. "It is impossible to determine whether a declared forced outage occurs because the plant is actually unable to operate or because this action increased the firms' profits," said Stanford University Economics Professor Frank Wolak, a member of California's market-monitoring Independent System Operator (ISO). Certainly, figures show that power producers have taken down more of California's capacity to produce electricity in the past year than in the previous 12 months. In August, for example, 3,391 megawatts of capacity was out of service in the most populous U.S. state, a 461 percent increase from the previous August. Wholesale prices have spiked as well, with the value of electricity sold in California in 2000 almost quadrupling to $27.97 billion from $7.43 billion in 1999. And, consumer groups point out, California was able to meet demand of 45,000 megawatts last summer, but now, in the low-demand winter months, the state is suffering from rolling blackouts even though demand is less than 30,000 megawatts. Up to 13,000 megawatts of Californian capacity was off-line in January for undisclosed reasons, consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said. Plant maintenance typically is carried out in the winter because that is when demand is lowest. Some plant outages, such as at certain units of Duke's Moss Landing plant, are linked to extensive upgrades required to meet strict emission standards. NO EVIDENCE OF MANIPULATION The Federal Energy Regulatory Committee (FERC) says there is no evidence of manipulation by the producers. It reported Feb. 1 that plant outages in California beginning on Dec. 13 were due to maintenance problems at old plants that were run too hard in the summer. But, critics note, FERC conducted 60 percent of its audits of California power plant outages over the telephone using questionnaires. "FERC's inspection was like a principal calling a kid who is cutting school and asking if he is sick," said Mindy Spatt, media director of The Utilities Reform Network (TURN) consumer group. Under political pressure, ISO, the traffic controller for 75 percent of the state's energy demands, began releasing daily data on the size of plant outages on Jan. 25, but not the reason why. "Because details on why these plants are off-line is confidential, the public is literally left in the dark," said Wenonah Hauter, Public Citizen's director of energy programs.

To: Box-By-The-Riviera™ who wrote (69043)	2/19/2001 9:30:14 AM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 436258

Read the entire article. The best thing you can say about him is that he's "new," doesn't understand the financial press and this episode has been a "learing experience" for him. The worse thing is that he's beginning to sound like the idiot he most likely is. A clearly piqued Treasury secretary pointed to his Senate confirmation hearing Jan. 17, when he declared at the outset that he favored a strong dollar, wondering aloud at that time why anyone would think he would do otherwise. Perhaps because he appeared to say so? The very next paragraph-- However, financial markets buffeted the dollar Friday on a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that seemed to quote O'Neill saying there in fact wasn't a strong dollar policy - that the strength of the currency in all ways reflected the health of the American economy.