[PEN-L:33533] Re: Re: Re: RE: Right wing sees the light! (almost)

[Nomiprins@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 12/30/2002 3:14:54 PM Eastern Standard Time, eugenecoyle@xxxxxxx writes:

> No, power plants (in California) were sold AFTER 
> the law was passed.  The conventional wisdom was that the old plants 
> would not be able to compete with the efficient and smarter new 
> operators -- as it turned out, the latter paid top dollar for the plants 
> -- and of course made a fortune from the investments.

Gene, 

Thanks for both those answers. What puzzles me is that Enron and others weren't involved in pre-AB 1890 buying or posturing in California, maybe not of power plants - but was anything else going on to foreshadow their eventual presence? When more banking dereg. via Glass Steagall repeal happened in November 1999 - it was a year after Citi and Travelers had already merged. 

1994 was the first year Enron broke the top 10 energy political contributors (that year, the top spot went to Atlantic Richfield, run by Lodwrick Cook, an old Bushian, who wound up on the board of Global Crossing 3 years later). So, they clearly had a hand in shaping policy. 

>From an early 96 House Commerce committee meeting- "Citing his experience with natural gas deregulation, Lay discounted the arguments made in opposition to electric customer choice. "I still remember some of the protests against 'open access' competition for the interstate gas market a decade ago," Ken Lay said. "Too risky; bad for consumers; reliability will suffer; it won't work.""    

Nomi