I actually live in the State of California. Last time I checked, the state had the 5th largest GDP in the World. Did you not know that? I am not going to get involved in a long drawn out discussion about California's energy "crisis" of several year back. Infrastrucure isues aside ( like Path #15 - - - see article ) the State never seemed to have any problems prior to the Enron's of the world manipulating its power grid, a company that I might add made over $730,000 in campaign contributions to Bush & Cheney throughout their political careers. Read the article of June 1st, and learn: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/06/01/BUGO76TNIQ1.DTL
The state never had an energy crisis until the summer when the state of Washington had a heat wave and did not have energy to sell to them. California had not produced enough electricity to meet it's own peak needs, due to environmentalists blocking every attempt to get new electricity plants online, for 20 years. Now every super smug environut in the world is jumping on Enron for ripping off California, which they did. Enron did not however, cause the crisis. They exacerbated it to their advantage. Californians got rid of the Governor that wanted to get all the money back in court BTW, so Enron won yet another round. Who cares? You snooze and let environuts run your energy policy and it costs you money. Max
If you know anything about courts, tribunals and adjudications (the late) Mother Theresa reciting the Hail Mary would be construed as criminal conspiracy. One of the most amusing phrases is 'the criminal justice system' when what is meant is 'the criminal law system'. It may be that as an incidental corollary justice may occasionally be done. Right now US style capitalism is going through one of its regular 'purging by scapegoat' phases where random players in the game get to be punished. Wrong place at the wrong time buddy and you get to be in deep sh*t. You get bullied into a plea bargain because you don't know your arse from your elbow when you are put under pressure. You get a smaller punishment so long as you bring in a bigger fish who is the next to be fu*ked up .. a sort of dominos game so to speak.
Bill Clinton's ties to Enron go back many years also. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/2/28/12723.shtml
Hahahaha maybe you just forget that the environmentalists were helped by Enron's DEMAND AND SABOTAGE TO SHUT DOWN some electricity plants didn't you read the article on CBS or what (btw they are OFFICIALLY accused of CONSPIRACY as you can see it's a word that exists in law) ?! And since in another thread you pretend that the environmentalists are manipulated why doesn't it pass through your mind that they have been used on purpose for the same result huh ? You pretend that Enron "just" exhacerb "Energy crisis" then it would be illogical that they didn't exhacerb the envornmentalists...
A little philosophical quote from Niestche that much applies to what happens today: "The liar uses the valid designations, the words, to make the unreal appear as real; he says, for example, "I am rich," when the word "poor" would be the correct designation of his situation. He abuses the fixed conventions by arbitrary changes or even by reversals of the names." Nietsche - On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense
And after electricity it's now oil ! http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/utilities/ ENERGY REFORM Protecting Against the Next Energy Crisis To keep our society running, we need affordable electricity and gasoline. FTCR works hard to watch utilities, energy producers and oil companies in order to tell the public about the true costs of their energy and of government plans to bailout and help the industry. FTCR has exposed manipulation of the electricity and oil markets and challenges the industry and politicians who support it to provide consumers with reliable and affordable energy. Download San Diego KGTV's investigation into high gas prices. (66 bytes) Click Here for the latest news on the Gasoline and Energy Crises Read about how domestic refiners, not OPEC, are largely responsible for the recent runup at the pump: * Nat'l Public Radio on the closure of Shell's Bakersfield, California refinery * Rising gas prices look like California's electricity crisis * Gasoline Prices: a Case of Cheating, Not Competing * Refiner Manipulation is Source of High Gas Prices --- Shell Oil is poised to close its Bakersfield refinery in October and that would take off line another 2% of the state's gasoline supply -- leaving California with only 12 refineries producing conventional gasoline. Shell acknowledges it has no plans to replace the lost fuel. If allowed, such a depletion of inventories will further drive the price of gasoline up on the commodities market, which I believe is Shell's goal. Internal documents from Shell show the Bakersfield refinery is the most profitable in the world for Shell. Shell is not merely closing the plant, but has plans to demolish it rather than sell the facility.
Yeah, yeah. "Burn, baby, burn. That's a beautiful thing," a trader sang about the massive fire. People say really dumb things all the time. It don't mean sh*t.
I was listening to the radio the other day and they were playing those tapes. All I could think was...I would have done the same thing if I was a trader. They saw a report that a fire was going to take down a power line, thus driving up the demand for power. The news was not public yet. The only logical thing to do as a trader is "buy". The phrase "burn, baby, burn" makes a good soundbite but really is just a red hering. It has nothing to do with what actually happened. To wit, traders taking advantage of a situation to make money. Now if they had started the fire, that would be different of course. And regarding California, what happened was inevitable due to their asinine view of markets. How can that many people be that stupid?
Oh yeah arbitrage of electricity in practice above, in theory below, I love fairy tales I know a lot of them while following 2 engineering schools and a doctorate cycle in factory management, happily I have thrown most of them when entering real world business http://www.anneku.com/book.htm Risk and flexibility in electricity: introduction to the fundamentals and techniques "Privatisation, liberalisation, and deregulation of the electricity industry all brought about uncertainty, which is the one thing that changed the way decisions are made and attitudes are formed. In place of vertical disintegration are now legal contracts between different entities. From one perspective, the contracts have risks and require risk management tools for hedging purposes. From another perspective, there are now more possibilities - more choices - more flexibility. "