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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (51543)	5/16/2002 8:04:52 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

This whole thing has a long way to run yet. All those other companies mentioned in the article (I don't think UBS involved then), plus Mirant, will probably end up being implicated. ("Oh, no, RICO, we didn't conspire; we just sat around, getting drunk, BSing, and chasing chicks, or guys, as the case may be"). Somebody (Enron, I belive) had control over something like 70% of the natural gas pipeline capacity thru about April of ought one, when the lease provisions changed. Stories around here,including from the state government and the PUC indicate that they let the pipeline run at less than capacity and refused to lease space to other providers, to deliberately drive up gas prices, which would also drive electrical costs even higher. There were also an abnormal number of plants taken off line for repairs for an abnormally long period of time. I caught some of the Senate hearings last night, and Boxer was referring to this, so it will soon be an issue, too. A number of "disgruntled former" (corporate words) employees testified in Calif about this last year. The PUC used to regulate and schedule maintenance time; not since de-regulation. One ISO employee said at the time "We have some pretty smart folks here, but they have MBAs in Games Theory working for them; we haven't got a chance". Aside from ripping us off, it always seemed to be unpatriotic to me, and also, had it continued, extremely shortsighted. We have the 5th largest economy in the world. We are supposed to become the 4th largest either this year or early next. Think about that for a minute. Only the US and 2 other countries in the world have a larger economy than ours. Look what happens to the international economy when a country such as Japan gets the flu. How could the US expect to do well if we go down the tubes? Why do these guys push the system so? I don't know if the Houston Bushies (lots of the cos. call Houston home, and of course Kenny Boy was Shrub's head money guy) wanted to stick it to us because of the election, or just unbridled greed. I do know that prices started falling within 3 days of Jeffords leaving the Repubs; on day one, soon to be committee chairman Joe Lieberman said that the first thing they were going to do would be to investigate the "gouging of Calif". Boom. Prices IMMEDIATELY started to drop. Ain't a lot of folks talking bad about Cal now; pretty obvious it had not much to do, in the acute phase, with NIMBYs, environmentalists, etc creating a shortage of generating facilities. (It was a good wake up call, and actually, a lot of plants had been approved in Davis' term prior to the problems). Another thing; the kind folks from the out of state energy companies have quit running ads telling us it was all the gov's fault. pissedoff@shocktheirballswithacattleprod.org