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Gold/Mining/Energy : CPN: Calpine Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (325)	2/19/2002 3:14:32 PM
From: Bob Rudd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 555

Ray: I'd hesitate to draw a 'Just Fraud' conclusion from this. It's not surprising that power players would do minor things at the margin to aggravate an already problematic situation to increase profits. It's like the lumber yard that jacks the price of plywood sheets when a hurricane comes thru...it's profiteering, but not the fundamental cause of the problem that 'just fraud' implies. Had the flawed regulatory actions and the longer term supply-demand conditions not created the opportunity, the profiteering wouldn't have occurred. The $8 million fine imposed on Williams is in line with what one would expect for market manipulation infractions...but many orders of magnitude below what one would expect for actually causing a crisis that would not have existed had it not been for their actions.