Enron's Swoon Imperils Grand Experiment

Wall Street Journal ^ | November 30, 2001 | Rebecca Smith, WSJ Staff

[snopercod]

It was one of the great fantasies of American business: a deregulated market that would send cheaper and more reliable supplies of electricity coursing into homes and offices across the nation.

But look what's happened instead. Enron Corp., the vast energy trader at the center of the new freewheeling U.S. power markets, now faces collapse amid a blizzard of questionable financial deals. And California, the first big state to deregulate its electricity market, has watched its experiment turn into a disaster, with intermittent blackouts and retail power rates as much as 40% higher than they were a year ago.

[Carry_Okie]

The main reason that we had lower energy prices in California was threefold: 1) we had one of the coolest summers in decades, and 2) Energy consuming businesses cut operations, left, or stopped planned expansion (we call that a recession Tuco dear), and 3) Davis bought so many power contracts that he later had to sell the excess and those sales drove the price down further.

You are demonstrating the usual idiotic socialist reasoning that goes about two inches deep into a subject and therefore assumes sufficient knowledge to make investment decisions for everybody else. Meanwhile you apparently never considered that the airlines are a heavily subsidized business and might lose to economic substitute goods such as fiber-optic teleconferencing if regulations were removed. Why is that a bad thing?

[Hugh Akston]

Overstatement alert on my part. Government regulation in most cases is a bad thing.

[CPT Clay]

Tuco;

Long time no see.

Hugh do alarms go off on your pc when Tuco chimes in?

[hopespringseternal]

Did I ever say different?

I thought government regulation was going to save us all. Why didn't it save us from Enron and Gov. Davis?

[Southack]

"First the federal governmnet deregulated the airline industry, and now we're spending $billions to bail the industry out.

Then the federal government deregulated the energy industry, and now it's costing taxpayers/investors $billions of dollars.

What's next to deregulate, the military?"

AmTrack (ooops, that one is highly regulated, and it is already costing taxpayers Billions).

[bvw]

When the re-insurers fall?

[beowolf]

When the re-insurers fall?

When that happens...the fit will really hit the shan. When companies can no longer off-load their real liabilities/exposure because the re-insurers aren't out there...there will be interesting times.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Great article, not much to disagree with.

We can only hope that the Davis administration people who invested in energy stocks this summer lost a bunch of money.

Price: 22.04 Change: -0.34
11/30/01 12:31 PM (minimum 20 minutes delayed)

From a high of 60 to nearly 20. They must have lost some money, certainly would not have made much unless they were holders before the crisis started!

[Tuco-bad]

Energy consuming businesses cut operations, left, or stopped planned expansion (we call that a recession Tuco dear),

Energy consuming businesses cut operations, left, or stopped planned expansion because of HIGH energy prices thanks to scams ENRON etc. were running (we call that CREATING a recession Carry_Okie dear),

[Tuco-bad]

I thought government regulation was going to save us all. Why didn't it save us from Enron and Gov. Davis?

Becasue the energy market in California was deregulated.

[Demidog]

And California, the first big state to deregulate its electricity market, has watched its experiment turn into a disaster

An absolute unmitigated lie. California has never deregulated the electricity market.

[Demidog]

The energy market was not deregulated. Hogwash.

[Tuco-bad]

AmTrack (ooops, that one is highly regulated, and it is already costing taxpayers Billions).

Never said all government regulation was good.

BTW - Are you still in business, I hear that companies out outsourcing much of their IT budgets to India, and engineering budgets (e.g., Boeing) to Russia.

If that's true, many of our high-tech friends on the Free Republuic will soon be on the bread lines.

[Carry_Okie]

Energy consuming businesses cut operations, left, or stopped planned expansion because of HIGH energy prices thanks to scams ENRON etc. were running (we call that CREATING a recession Carry_Okie dear)

BZZZZZT wrongo! Shows how much you have been following the California power crisis. The biggest scammers causing high energy prices were PUBLIC power agencies, DWR, Bonneville, and LADWP. Best that you go to the calpowercrisis and calpowergate lists and start reading the couple of hundred threads you have apparently ignored. Now, that is not to say that there has not been manipulation of the gas market, but then you would have to ask Bill Clinton why he set aside the Western Slope of the Rockies and closed it to gas exploration. Guess who that benefitted?

[hopespringseternal]

Becasue the energy market in California was deregulated.

Lie all you want, it will always be a lie.

So what lie do you have to tell about SEC regulation of Enron not preventing its downfall?

[lepton]

Kind of odd to apply the energy de-regulation argument to fraudulant financial book-keeping, just because a company that did so was in the energy business.

[lepton]

Great idea actually. Deregulating the Military, that is. Actually a founding princible: check out the history of letters of Marque and Reprisal.

Placing the profit incentive to find criminality with those who define criminality is a bad idea. Bounties work fine when those pursuing them don't get to create the call, and where those that create the call don't profit.

[Tuco-bad]

So what lie do you have to tell about SEC regulation of Enron not preventing its downfall?

If the SEC let Lazio get away with insider trading, why should the SEC care about Enron?

[lepton]

The main reason that we had lower energy prices in California was threefold: 1) we had one of the coolest summers in decades, and 2) Energy consuming businesses cut operations, left, or stopped planned expansion (we call that a recession Tuco dear), and 3) Davis bought so many power contracts that he later had to sell the excess and those sales drove the price down further.

You forgot: 4) Temporary higher prices supported increased well openings which increased supply. There are more than twice as many domestic natural gas taps as there were at the beginning of 2000.