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To: LLCF who wrote (105834)	6/1/2001 1:23:49 AM
From: portage	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Hi DAK. Though your question here is a bit confusing, so was my phrasing. I'll take a stab though. Don was good enough to reply to me with an articulate and well reasoned post, so I acknowledged it in my state of late night bleariness, throwing in a few wisecracks I'd heard at some point. My point is simply that I don't agree with the main argument I keep hearing against a reasonably high temporary price cap, that it will prevent future investment in increasing the capacity for providing additional supply down the line. The gouging arguments have been posted ad nauseum, so I won't go there again. As to the basics of the interactions between supply, demand, and price in a normal market without major barriers to entry, of course I agree with the standard economic tenets. I didn't say this was a pure economics question. This particular market is abnormal and is not about widgets. It's about a basic necessity that seems to have been provided for the last 50 years without any such severe problems, until bad policy combined with economic opportunism that never seemed to be applied specifically to our detriment in the past collided in the provision of this electricity. I think this situation may get really ugly - when you deal with peoples' raw emotions and ability to pay for food or rent, efficient allocation principles somehow become less compelling. I think I'm beginning to understand the grand plan of Enron a little better now. Seeing as GB Sr. signed into law the plan enabling deregulation, and after looking (only superficially) at the elements of the latest energy plan and considering GWB's connection..... Enron as a private trading market with no real oversight such as the SEC, rolled out nationally -- I don't think I look forward to that.