At 11:55 PM 5/30/01 -0400, John D. Giorgis wrote:
>At 07:26 AM 5/30/01 -0400 Gary Nunn wrote:
> >From what I am reading and hearing on the news - which is only what they
> >want us to know - that the west coast electricity crisis is a result of
> >federal deregulation and bad management of the electric companies coupled
> >with the fact that several major (regional) nuclear reactors are offline at
> >the moment for maintenance.
>
>That, and the fact that California built Silicon Valley without ever
>building a new power plant might have something to do with it too. When
>demand goes way up (think "new economy") and supply remains constant, you
>get price increases. When prices are capped, (as in California), you get
>shortages.
>
> >An interesting bit of trivia, last month, a major California electric
> >company declared bankruptcy, literally HOURS after depositing $50 million
> >dollars in bonus checks into mid and upper management bank accounts. The
> >public and even the governor screamed and the politicians promised
> >investigations. However, as with many stories, the results of those
> >investigations (if they happened at all) seem to have lost their
> >newsworthiness.
> >story here:
> >http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/cal_power010409.html
>
>Ladies and Gentlemen, a textbook case in how rumours get started.
>
>First of all, the article says nothing about "upper management", as you did
>Gary, rather it refers to "mid-level managers and other employees." I
>don't know about you, but to me, "other employees" implies rank-and-file.
>(But I could be wrong - that's just my impression.) Of course, the
>article actually notes that the company was "emphasizing that the bonuses
>did not go to senior managers."
>
>Secondly, Gary conveniently neglected to mention that that $50mil was
>spread out over 6,000 employees. In other words, roughly a bit more than
>$8,000 per employee. (A bankruptcy lawyer quoted in the article, says
>that the checks were actually closer to $5,000/employee, suggesting that
>either $50mil is a high figure, 6,000 employees is a low figure, or both.)
>
>Thirdly, PG&E had a $9bil deficit. The $50mil amounts to 0.06% of that
>amount. In other words, the payment of the bonus had almost no impact
>whatsoever on the solvency of PG&E.
>
>In other words, we have a company that is actually taking care of its
>employees by ensuring that they get paid before all their jobs are risked
>in a bankruptcy court. The company's reward? More lambasting from
>liberals like Gray Davis.
In a day when image on the evening news is everything, though, even
conservatives thought it looked bad.
-- Ronn! :)
