The $10 Billion Jolt: California's Energy Crisis: Cowardice, Greed, Stupidity and the Death of Deregulation

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Walsh, James, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Electric utilities--Deregulation.

Electric utilities.

Energy policy--California.

Energy policy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (379 pages)

Place of Publication:

[Place of publication not identified] Silver Lake Publishing 2001

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Enron is bankrupt. Perot Systems insists it didn't do anything wrong. Relatively honest energy companies are settling--admitting they gamed the California energy market.The California energy crisis continues to be more than just a news story. It's the framework for political and financial issues in the Golden State. And a new book from Silver Lake Publishing makes sense of this framework.THE 10 BILLION JOLT: California's Energy Crisis-Cowardice, Greed, Stupidity and the Death of Deregulation by Silver Lake editorial director James Walsh is the first comprehensive analysis of the state's ill-fated effort at deregulating its electricity market. Says Walsh:The politicians in Sacramento called the program "deregulation." But it wasn't really that. It was half-deregulation, in which producers and middlemen were able to manipulate prices while end-users were locked in to non-economic prices. It would be hard to come up with a worse situation if you were trying.THE 10 BILLION JOLT follows the market developments chronologically, but flashes forward and back to show how specific decisions and actions played out across a six-year arc starting in the spring of 1996 and leading to...today.Topics that the book covers include: the politics and politicians that crafted the market changes; how prices were set at various stages; how utilities differ from energy marketers and generators; why so many economists have a blind faith in the efficiency of deregulation; how various companies manipulated the California markets; why some of California's big utilities went bankrupt and others didn't; and why the blackouts of early 2001 haven't recurred."A lot of people talk about the energy crisis," says Walsh. "And ranting about Enron is easy. But consumers and voters need a better understanding of how this kind of thing happens-to avoid letting it happen again. The crooks

at Enron only obscure a bigger problem."THE 10 BILLION JOLT: California's Energy Crisis-Cowardice, Greed, Stupidity and the Death of DeregulationJames WalshTrade paperback366 pages (6" x 9")Price: 19.95ISBN 1-56343-748-1.

Contents:

Preliminaries

contents

Introduction

The Feds vs. the Californians

The Theories that Shaped the California Plan

Lobbyists Define the Shape of the Plan

Steve Peace-a dedicated worker

Politics and the Plan

Stranded Costs Would Always Be the Problem

The Mechanics Under the CPX and the ISO

The Marketing Blitz That Never Quite Happened

All the Tricky Bonds

The Short Delay That Spoke Volumes

Consumers Didn't Care...and Activists Didn't Think Clearly

Investors Feel the Effects

The Munis

NIMBY Politics Seal the Plan's Fate

The Flashpoints of Electricity Pricing

What the Generators Were Doing...and How

Enron

The Blackouts

Did Energy Companies Conspire to Scam the People?

Using Bankruptcy as a Bargaining Tool

Gray Davis and the Bail-Out

Cleaning Up the Mess

Conclusion

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

ISBN:

1-281-03995-0

9786611039950

1-56343-822-4

OCLC:

936899457