Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: miraje who wrote (825)	8/9/2001 2:42:52 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1715

Hi James, I wondering if you or anyone on the thread would have a follow-up on the CATO take on the price gouging. In particular, what would be a most interesting statistic is the actual dollar amount of the transactions that Mr. Taylor disdains as public utility price gouging. I feel certain that in the light of day, we'd find that the Enron/Dynegy/Mirant/Duke (etc.) group were charging their inflated prices for months on end, and that the seemingly outrageous public utility overcharges were only occurring irregularly during Stage II and Stage III alerts. Something Mr. Taylor conveniently (for his biases) failed to mention. Best, Ray :)

To: miraje who wrote (825)	8/9/2001 11:31:29 PM
From: portage	Respond to of 1715

Well, that cato article is almost interesting and all, even if it is old news, but it completely misses the point by designating the symptoms as the cause and turning the argument into a silly socialism vs. capitalism rant, when abuse, gaming, and structure of the delivery is the issue. Nobody here liked the excessive rates regardless of who was charging them. But what set the stage to allow them to be charged ? 1. Pete Wilson's and big industry's deregulation plan, hammered through in the dark of night, signed onto by some dummy demos. 2. El Paso (out of state) gas supply manipulator. 3. Unscheduled plant shutdowns (mostly not by California companies or municipalities from what I gather, except where forced into it by the cascading effects of deregulation and gouging by the suppliers like El Paso - it's the alleged intentional shutdowns as supply was artificially held back to take advantage of spot market "shortages" that I'm talking about). 4. FERC totally failing to respond to an out of control situation by not applying their mandated duty. This article tries to take a political stance by blaming it on Davis. Here you have a governor who was not meant to be or trained to be in the energy business, who reacted cautiously initially partly for that reason. When things really started cascading out of control thanks to the deregulation and the gougers, and it became obvious that FERC was out to lunch, he did step in, and has done a good job considering the heinous conditions. California agents were inept ? Is it a big surprise that the gougers who had been planning this outrage for years and testing it were more adept than Department of Water employees who were tossed into the fire ? Ridiculous point. Had the thing not been deregulated, they wouldn't have been thrown into this. Davis was looking after the consumers, as he should be, and he had to do it on a steep learning curve without experienced resources at his command. And by the way, where's the cost data they allude to, and how much of it is based on gouged costs (let's compare it to gas costs in the rest of the country, eh?). Since when does this Hora from one small little municipal district speak for all the unnamed private players ? This article is absurd. The important thing is that we've seen what happens when a state gives up its regulatory authority and energy infrastructure control to private players and their friends at FERC. The state shouldn't necessarily run the power system (it never had to under regulation), but it damn sure needs to keep the regulatory oversight and emergency power to stop abuses.