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Pastimes : The California Energy Crisis - Information & Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GVTucker who wrote (458)	6/12/2001 1:59:09 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1715

Hi Vance, I had no idea you were lurking this thread. Thanks for contributing. As far as the Enron model goes, what I see is that overall, the company may not be showing much of a profit, as you say, but that revenues are growing at a heck of a good clip and assets are, shall we say, not in the static category. Of course, as we both know, profits lead to taxes. Taxes lead to less money in the hip wallet. So what motivation does ENE have to create profits? Not much, as far as I can tell. Much better to achieve greater and more concentrated power and control in the industries they are in and to start to exploit the zany "free market" religion so that they can expand the number of industries that they participate in with their trading mechanisms. I've watched the development of the bandwidth trading market, and I have to admit it's a lot like trying to see someone slip a glass slipper on a granny's carbuncled old foot. It just don't go. Too many skeletons in the telecom closet for this to ever make sense. Now, the latest is they want to try it with DRAMs. Good luck. The Japanese did this in the '80's. No good came of it. My view is that electricity, the lifeblood of the information age, is simply too critical a supply to far too many pieces of our amazingly intertwined economic engine to be allowed to be jerked around by some cowboys for the sake of gaming the system. This devil-may-care attitude of the "free marketers" simply creates too much chaos and too many victims. You and I may, and no doubt do disagree. But this story is as old as the electric industry itself. The Frontline video set-up piece had a really nice vignette of FDR declaring war on the private power privateers in the '30's. Of course, everyone here remembers Sam Insull, the face that represesnted the bad guys from the video clip (Right?) Insull's operation was an interlocking trust that ain't a heck of a lot differenr for the operations that are in place right now, where you have, for instance, Edison International doing just fine thank you, while the kill off their own subsidiary, SCE, for the sake of shirking regulatory burdens, unions and low growth business. This is nothing new, and in fact I'm getting bored with fighting the "free marketers" who simply fail to understand that "free markets" created chaos, destroyed other dependent businesses and were generally a really bad idea from the git go. Except for the insiders and shareholders. Anyway, you may be all in favor of market solutions. I'm an old FDR liberal who sees clearly that the electric utilities, left to their own devices would screw this country like an A-19 light bulb every chance they get. Re-regulate and save the economy from its own worst polemicists, the "free marketers". If ever there was a misnomer, sheesh. OK, I did not single out Enron, but I will single out El Paso Natural Gas, Duke, Dynegy, Mirant, Reliant and Williams. I think you chose the least culpable of the cabal to base your argument on, and I'm not sure if you were being disingenuous or simply haven't been keeping up on the news. All the companies I've mentioned are now involved in legal actions for fraud and market manipulation. And they have made outsized, bizarre profits by gaming the system. Not to mince words here. Thanks for your reply. I like going head to head with someone who's opinions I respect, though I don't always agree. :) Cordially, Ray