What??? He didn't change the subject. ENRON screwed CA pretty bad. All that ENRON fraud and manipulation went out of CA's pocket and into that of TX. Think of all the salaries, the support industries based in TX that directly benefited from ENRON's fraud.... It's a large number that corresponds directly to the time and $$$ amount of CA's initial budget shortfall. TX basically robbed CA out of billions of $$'s and now the 2 are being compared as if they had the same advantages and disadvantages over the last decade? You're making an irrelevant side argument meant to foster a political ideology which you are totally subscribing to because of your political bias. It's not liberal versus conservative; in this case its a state that got f--ked and TX was the beneficiary.
That is so false I don't even know where to begin. I don't know if you are a trader, but I'll explain to you what happened. Grey Davis decided as governor to fix the price of energy in CA. In other words, he put in a ceiling for energy in CA. That made CA a net seller of energy at a certain price. The problem however is that when CA ran out of their own energy, they had to go into the open market to buy it. That price was not fixed, it was floating based on supply and demand. So let's say they were sellers at 50. That means they sold energy at 50 to the people of CA. Most of the time they could produce it for less then that in their state. However, when they couldn't they often had to pay 100, 300 or 800 in the open market. So they are net sellers at 50 and they are getting squeezed when they had to buy it from outside the state. Now, did Enron understand this? Of course they did. Everyone in the industry knew that CA was this ass backward state that tried to fix energy prices. And everyone gamed the system. When the blackouts occured, the marketpllace squeezed CA. I would do the same thing, so would you. In fact, this happens every single day in the market. Take a look at the chart of SHLD. Small float, heavily shorted. When the stock squeezes, the market goes after the shorts because there are no shares for them to buy to cover their position. And don't tell me you would be a nice guy and offer to sell energy at below market prices. You, like Enron and everyone else would sell at the highest price you possibly could. It was the dumbest move maybe in the history of CA to fix energy prrices. You can only fix a price if you can fix the entire market. You can't fix the price in one state and then have all the other states floating. It just doesn't work. That Was Grey Davis's fault. Now was Enron also to blame. Sure. They absolutely gamed the system. They knew what the regulatory issues were and they knew CA was vulnerable to price squeezes during blackouts. CA learned their lesson and I don't think they will ever do that again. And let that be a lesson to all you little socialists out there that think you can fix prices. There will always be a market, black or otherwise. Price controls only lead to shortages. And shortages lead to panics. And panics lead to much much higher prices. This has nothing to do with CA vs TX though as Enron went bankrupt and cost the state of TX billions. Not to mention when Enron went under they took Dynegy, Calpine and several other firms with them and basically destroyed the entire industry and cost TX massive losses in tax revenues.
Good reply and I appreciate your points. Deregulation is not an issue I can argue effectively as my understanding of the details is poor and I do have faith in free markets. However, it still sounds like a conflict between federal and state policies caused this massive fallout and CA took the heaviest toll. There is a fairly strong connection between Bush Jr, federal/state energy regulation, and Texas. To say that CA essentially "did this to itself" is not recognizing the nature of the conflict. Enron abused a loophole that it itself helped create... that's not a free market. Maybe we can run with the trading analogy. Suppose the prices you listed as an example were what this manipulated energy market created. All exchanges have circuit breakers in place to prevent clearly erroneous transactions - 10% away from NBBO in many cases. Trades will get broken as a result. Is CA due a broken trade from some the clearly wrong prices it was forced to trade at? I'm sure you'd be on the phone yelling up a storm if you got a full $1 of slip away from the current bid/ask on some liquid product. And, you'd probably get the trade broken too... I'd like to think that if the energy market at the time was actually a *fair* market (not one created by Bush and TX to be wholly one sided); the fallout would've been less severe. What if we tallied up and asked TX to pay for the clearly erroneous trades; what do you think the $$ number would be?
Sooner or later technology will win over traditional industries. That means California will move forward and Texas willlag behind. Nothing can compete with technology, its supporting industries, its revenue, tax and wealth contribution to the society. I am just glad all the poor people are leaving CA for TX. It is just a matter of time for CA to shine again. I wish they increase income and property taxes in CA so that only the rich can live.
Jeezus another idiot from the ET sockpuppet assembly line! California is headed for insolvency. Increase taxes and it will just get there faster. This assertion that CA has more technology than TX is ludicrous. Aside from Facebook TX by far employs more technological workers than any other two states combined. I live in CA and my effective tax rate is 6.1%. Spread that on your toast alias-boy.
You'll probably get your wish. Just keep playing with your "johnson", it'll help speed up the happening.
CA has income tax, high sales tax, high sales tax, and if you live there, I guess you like taxes. Not you, Mr. Eight, just anyone who continues to live there. A bit hypocritical to say you're against taxes. But, I do love California, nice place to live except for the taxes. c
I have a rich relative who moved from San Diego after living there for 20 years and now he settle in Houston and he seems pretty happy about his decision. Actually, he told me that his business is thriving in houston.