Posted on 10/28/2019 7:05:23 AM PDT by outpostinmass2
Calls to transition the troubled Pacific Gas and Electric Co. into a public utility intensified Sunday, as nearly 1 million customers lost power throughout California and the Kincade Fire blazed through Sonoma County.
A day earlier, Gov. Gavin Newsom told Bloomberg he would encourage Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to make a bid for PG&E. “We would love to see that interest materialize, in a more proactive, public effort,” he said Saturday. Berkshire Hathaway’s energy subsidiary is heavily invested in the utility business, in California and elsewhere. It owns multiple solar farms, including a 550-megawatt facility in San Luis Obispo County that is among the world’s largest.
PG&E’s stock price plunged by nearly one third Friday, to $5 a share, after the utility told regulators that a transmission line malfunctioned near where the fire started in Geyserville late Wednesday.
Jared Ellias, a bankruptcy law expert at the UC Hastings College of Law, said the Kincade Fire might scare off either of the two big groups wrestling for control of PG&E.
“Whether it’s turning the power off, or not turning the power off, PG&E can’t do anything right,” he said. “That’s a much riskier investment than any of these guys thought.”
He added Newsom’s hope that Berkshire Hathaway steps in could be wishful thinking.
“It feels a bit like longing for a savior when there isn’t an obvious solution or a cheap solution ... there isn’t a white knight,” Ellias said.
He said it’s crazy to think Berkshire has “hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in safety without raising rates or taxes.”
“The bankruptcy court can’t fix these problems and Warren Buffett can’t fix them either,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Exactly. If I were in that scenario my response would be “no way in hell”.
If the state takes it over, the rates will go way up, the trees will be cut and the few Republican parts of the state will get the lest amount of service.
“Good luck with that one, Newsome. Buffett may be a Democrat. But he’s no fool.”
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You forgot... he’s also a capitalist! If’n there ain’t no profits to be made here, he likely will not bat an eyelash.
With the idiots currently in charge and with Utilities subject to the control (and whim) of the California PUC, no one with even ONE functioning brain cell would invest.
I’d bet if PG&E were offered to Buffet for free he would turn it down. I know I would.
Socialist states kill public corporations, plain and simple.
Yes, but the investment in rail and cars goes back more than a decade. They’re not just something he picked up on a whim a couple years ago.
It gives me at least some confidence that moving most of my retirement account away from mutual funds was the right move.
My biggest individual holding is Portland General Electric (POR) which one thinks should be safe since it is hydroelectric power. But it is also located in a state run by idiots, so maybe I'd better rethink it.
Its not just the trees, its also the underlying brush. Also the wacko environmentalists have their collective fingers in the pie at all times.
“Yes, but the investment in rail and cars goes back more than a decade. “
Your post was touting what he is buying today. His investments are trailing the DOW over the past few years.
“Newsom should be approaching prominent billionaire liberals like Bill Gates...”
This whole scam is getting to be reminiscent of the ‘asbestos crisis’.
It started slow, with the removal of asbestos from old buildings etc..
It blossomed into its own industry what with suits, protective gear and finally getting to the point that by the time you tore down an OLD house and took all the asbestos ‘steps for removal’ etc, it was costing more to demo the old one family, one story house than to build a new 3 story office building.
So gradually ‘they’ eased of on regs and we are back where we were but at a ‘cheaper’ price.
as ‘they’ say “FOLLOW THE MONEY”
Note no fossil fueled backup generators for you.
If LA burns, will not America be better off?
HELP! Daddy Warbucks... PLEASE save us!
Anybody who would invest anything in California is officially out of their minds!
California is exhibiting the situation of the USA in “Atlas Shrugged”.
CA is phasing out natural gas. They are going to eliminate combustion engines. There are many places where you cannot burn wood in a fireplace. I read something (I need to find it) that said CA had assumed ownership of the aquafiers.
In some of the places that have burned in past, permits to rebuild single family dwellings are not being issued. Where the Paradise fire was last year, the environmentalists found a rare toad (or something) so permits aren't being issued there - the toad lived through the fire and it must've been there before, but - CA.
warren dont cut no trees
Even Buffet couldn’t turn things around, when the state is run by morons.
Not touting, suggesting the poster I was replying to may want to look at what Buffett was buying today, and commenting that he had existing major investments in areas the poster was unaware of.
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