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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pcstel who wrote (145928)	9/16/2014 10:59:28 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

"Blame it on Bush". Actually, no; I blamed it on Enron, as did the judicial system. I/we also blame Reliant and others. I could maybe blame Ayn Rand for institutionalizing unbridled greed, but I won't; I'll leave that to others. California had an installed generating capacity of 45GW. At the time of the blackouts, demand was 28GW. A demand supply gap was created by energy companies, mainly Enron, to create an artificial shortage. Energy traders took power plants offline for maintenance in days of peak demand to increase the price. [9] [10] Traders were thus able to sell power at premium prices, sometimes up to a factor of 20 times its normal value. Because the state government had a cap on retail electricity charges, this market manipulation squeezed the industry's revenue margins, causing the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and near bankruptcy of Southern California Edison in early 2001. [11] en.wikipedia.org Federal prosecutors conducting a criminal probe of California's energy crisis have shifted their investigation away from Enron and onto the company's Houston neighbor, Reliant Resources Inc., according to sources. Documents released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission depict Reliant traders and plant operators engaging in a range of deceptive practices to drive up energy prices during the crisis. chron.com "Customer conservation once the market price of the product was allowed to be passed on to the consumer, which immediately saw demand drop." Customer conservation has been the cornerstone of our energy/environmental programs since the first oil crisis