Gene Coyle should have been there instead, but it was I who attended. For
unknown reasons (I'll ask), I was invited to a meeting today with a bunch
of business people and folks who work for municipal-owned power companies
to hear talks on what's happening on the California electricity rip-off
crisis. Not being expert on this field in any way, shape, or form, a lot of
it was new to me. A staff economist from the CA legislature spoke on
proposals for dealing with the crisis. On-camera (and thus on the record),
he was unwilling to say anything controversial, but the main implicit
message is the best thing that could happen for the people of California is
if all three of the big electric power generators (and not just PG&E) were
to go bankrupt. Naturally enough, he said that it would be a bad idea to
encourage such a result (since it would hurt the business climate). He was
pretty good, nonetheless, in saying that the whole "deregulation" (which he
called "restructuring") was a total disaster. Off-camera, his emphasis was
on how the power companies engineered the whole thing (though the state and
the Federales made their contributions) and were profiting from it
mightily. However, it looks like there is no solution in the near future,
so the California state government is going to be spending the equivalent
of "three public schools a day, 7 days a week" [not an exact quote, but
close] to pay for electricity and this money would be going almost
entirely to the coffers of the energy corporations. So if anyone has any
complaints about the volume of contributions I make to pen-l, I may be
forced to cut back in the future as the blackouts roll over us ...
One point the fellow made, BTW, was that the situation was made worse by
the California commitment to avoid blackouts at any cost. In the face of
this declaration of inelastic demand, the power companies are more than
willing to charge any cost...
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
