I'm pretty sure, at the time, you were one of the ones who claimed there was no over charging...are you now realizing there actually was?
Since when is "a few hundred millions" of ill gotten gains modest?
In negotiating 101, if you want to recoup "a few hundred millions" the first thing you do is add at least "a few hundred millions" to your "a few hundred millions" claim.
At the time, I was saying that many of the high power costs were justified and the "caps" (up until the point of curtailment & blackouts) were improper. I had utility clients in Washington state and Oregon, generating electricity with small 1 to 2 MW diesel generators, just to serve load at prices of $150/kWh to $200/kWh or more when some were saying anyone charging $100/kWh or more was guilty of price gouging. If those utilities sold that electricity for what it cost them, I didn't think that was price gouging.
I also objected to myself and others in the PNW having our local utilities raise rates and threaten us with curtailment while many California rates were frozen at artificially low values by the California Pubic Utility Commission. I also felt that alot of the complaints by California politicians about how they were being ripped off by Enron were really being overstated by several orders of magnitude
Finally, I also felt that many of the "smoking guns" of price gouging and market manipulation being stated in the press were pure "spin." There were many times when California would not allow diesel generators to pollute their air, but utiltiies up in Washington ran diesel generators to make power that was needed by the West Coast and yet couldn't collect a proper price for the power. In a case like that, should we breath poluted air when folks in California aren't willing to either pay the full cost of the power or allow for temporary pollution regulation waivers in California?
Since when is "a few hundred millions" of ill gotten gains modest?
When Grey Davis screams that energy companies have stollen $6 billion or so, and the real value turns out to be a couple of hundred million, I consider that modest. Remember a FERC judge studied the matter and concluded once that California owed other utilities maybe $300 million and California leaders claimed that they were owed by these power companies somewhere around $4 to $6 billion, but based on the analysis by the FERC judge, he figured maybe California was owed about $300 million so it was close to a wash. Based on new information not known to the public, FERC is now saying maybe California is owed more. (Of course what is not discussed is that maybe some of the questionable things that were done by the Cal PX, the California Dept of Water Resources and the California ISO could be considered market manipulation and increase what "California" owes to others outside the state.) I don't think that "crying wolf" helps settle things.
In negotiating 101, if you want to recoup "a few hundred millions" the first thing you do is add at least "a few hundred millions" to your "a few hundred millions" claim.
If I tried to do what you suggest with an insurance company claim on a car accident, I could end up in jail. I don't think that it is right to fluff up claims. You may have a much more sophisticated approach to the world than I do that allows such things. I just hope you don't do that on your IRS charitable claims deductions.
As to Negotiations 101, we obviously attended different schools of learning. I doubt I would file a sworn affidavit with a Bankrupcy judge saying I was owed $6 billion when in fact I knew it was only "a few hundred million." If nothing else, my credibility as a witness in the subsequent court proceeding before that judge would be worth zip.
From what I know California has no credibility as to monitary damage amounts and has no integrity on that subject.
When you add to that the fact that the government of California has its "finger prints" all over many dirty deals (like submitting false transmission schedules to change power prices, like calling up certain power marketing companies and asking them to submit false power purchases and sales data so that the market price will be changed, like putting political pressure on federal officals to force the Bonneville Power Administration to curtrail spilling water from behind dams to move juvinille fish out to sea faster and increase the fishes chance of survival and causing Washington State electric utilities to use high priced diesel generated power because very low reservoirs were being drawn down by BPA to produce power for California at bargin basement prices........etc.), I get tired of hearing them whine and cry wolf in California.
Boxer and Feinstein are full of it.
Each one of those entities charged California two or three times as much for electricity as Enron did. [link]
OK, it was a stupid question. It's because you're a Volvo-driving, business-hating, Gray Davis loving democrat. That's why.