Posted on 02/09/2002 12:09:07 PM PST by John Jorsett
Perhaps nothing underscores the degree to which a link between Enron Corp. and the California power crisis has been ignored as a moment during a congressional hearing this week.
Former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling was describing the company's condition as of last spring. Enron, he said, faced "terrible problems" because California's electricity crisis had been "solved." Within a few months, of course, Enron's problems exploded.
The reaction to Skilling's comment? Silence.
No one on the panel explored why good news for California might have meant bad news for Enron, or vice versa. The silence added to the frustration of California consumer activists who believe Enron played a large and still-unexplored role in the crisis that has raised rates by 40 percent and cost the state $50 billion by some estimates.
"In the hierarchy of Enron's victimhood, no one should rank higher than California consumers," said Michael Aguirre, a San Diego attorney pressing a class-action case against energy suppliers. "But in the hierarchy of the investigation, California consumers are not even on the victims' list."
Revelations regarding Enron's role in California and its potential to influence the state crisis continue to emerge despite the tight focus of ongoing congressional investigations on how the company's collapse affected investors and employees.
Consider the following, and the questions some consumer activists and energy experts say they raise:
An energy consultant from Oregon told Congress that electricity prices fell 30 percent after Enron declared bankruptcy. Was Enron's huge, unregulated trading operation contributing to higher prices?
A San Diego-based expert in financial trading told a Senate committee that Enron would have been unable to derive $2 billion in electricity trading profits over two years unless it was fleecing an unsophisticated buyer. Was the state simply overmatched in dealing with energy companies like Enron?
The director of a Washington, D.C., think tank that studies derivatives – the complex financial contracts that became an Enron specialty – said the Houston company evolved into a massive yet unregulated financial institution, one whose trades could be valued at $850 billion by the time of its bankruptcy.
All this without being subject to any of the rules typically in place to ensure the stability and safety of a financial institution, such as a bank or insurance company. And the largest segment of Enron's trading operation by far was devoted to electricity. The most active market, in all likelihood, was California.
Nonetheless, much of Enron's intense trading business in electricity and natural gas – a key commodity in generating electricity – remains beyond the reach of state investigators seeking to understand California's crisis and seemingly beyond the interest of federal investigators.
To be sure, there are exceptions.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein has been particularly concerned with Enron's activity in the natural-gas market and how that may have affected electricity prices. Most California generating plants use natural gas as their fuel.
The senator said she is also concerned about Enron's dominance in electronic trading, which also was unregulated. Next week, she plans to introduce legislation that would regulate online trading and empower the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to oversee other unregulated trading activities.
"The problem is that Enron On-Line was both a buyer and seller of electricity and at the same time was the one setting prices," said Feinstein, noting that Enron also controlled at least 70 percent of the natural-gas trades in the state.
"Enron had the ability to manipulate prices and gouge consumers," she said.
Sen. Barbara Boxer is also pressing to open a General Accounting Office investigation into Enron's role in the state.
But Frank Partnoy, a University of San Diego law professor and expert in sophisticated trading transactions, said the company's role in the crisis would require special expertise to explore.
Getting a full explanation of the California crisis, Partnoy said, would likely require a task force assembled by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and the Treasury Department. Those agencies, he added, could combine the expertise needed to penetrate the complex trading that characterizes deregulated energy markets.
For the record, a spokesman for Skilling yesterday cautioned against reading too much into his comments about how the taming of the California crisis affected Enron.
In the meantime, other companies continue to emulate the Enron model and fill the void left by the company's decline. Sempra Energy, for example, last week acquired Enron's industrial metals trading business.
"People are asking the question whether there are other Enrons – and there are," said Randall Dodd, director of the Derivatives Study Center in Washington, D.C.
Several energy companies, he added, have financial activities similar to Enron's.
Most of those companies continue to be active in California and promote deregulation in other states. And the debacle that deregulation wrought here must be examined in light of deeper investigation into Enron, said a consumer activist.
"There are two big dots on the map – Enron and California," said Doug Heller of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Santa Monica. "And they have to be connected."
And that buyer was Gray Davis.
Because Enron last year squeezed California by withholding energy from the California markets and making enormous profits, state and local pension funds either sold or did not invest additional money in Enron stock.
This extra supply of Enron stock or reduction in demand for Enron stock caused the price of the stock to decline.
Corporate America has learned from the Enron debacle not to irk their biggest investors; state and local pension funds.
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And they have to be connected!
Sort of states the MO doesn't it!
They are gonna keep flogging this in the Media till the people believe it!!
Facts are not needed to make any connections these days!
Just keep pounding away via the Media and after a while it is accepted as fact by the sheeple!
Thanks for the article , the ping and putting up the search banners!
Still, the charges in Rose's piece do not jibe with the Davis administration's report on the evil "price gougers" -- wherein Enron was next to last, with only a small percentage of the total volume of electricity supplied and the next-to-lowest average price per MwH.
It may well be that Enron was flipping energy contracts like a mad fast fooder, but they were the actual supplier to California in a remarkably few trades.
They are really reaching!
The story I want to see told, is about Arthor Anderson. Open honest information to all, is a key to the stock market working and actually fair.
How much does California owe Enron, for instance? Would it have been enough to prevent the bankruptcy?
Fascinating thought, isn't it? A look at the Accounts Receivable ledger would probably be worth some amusement.
But it wasn't a lack of cash that sent Enron tumbling down (they apparently had done without this commodity for some few years). Instead, it was the collapse in stock value -- tracing to rumors, then admission, of accounting chicanery -- that ruined their loan collateral position.
Consequently, I rather doubt that the California arrears contributed much, if at all, to the bankruptcy. In fact, I betcha Enron somehow factored those receivables through some kind of "credit-linked derivative" (as Citibank did with its own loans to Enron) and that yet another group of "investors" is holding the California bag.
Why conduct any research, or do any critical thinking, when it's all laid out for you in the "talking points" fax from the DNC or the Davis administration?
There is no meat on the bones of this story. In fact, there are no bones, only a web of speculation -- designed to mislead and trap the unwary reader.
The mainstream media: Ignorance On Parade.
ADOLPH HITLER ON THE PRESS It's readers, by and large, can be divided into three groups:
First, into those who believe everything they read; Second, into those who have ceased to believe anything; Third, into the minds which critically examine what they read, and judge accordingly.
Numerically, the first group is by far the largest. It consists of the great mass of the people and consequently represents the simplest-minded part of the nation. It cannot be listed in terms of professions, but at most in general degrees of intelligence. To it belong all those who have neither been born nor trained to think independently, and who partly from incapacity and partly from incompetence believe everything that is set before them in black and white. To them also belongs the type of lazybones who could perfectly well think, but from sheer mental laziness seizes gratefully on everything that someone else has thought, with the modest assumption that the someone else has exerted himself considerably. Now, with all these types, who constitute the great masses, the influence of the press will be enormous, They are not able or willing themselves to examine what is set before them, and as a result their whole attitude toward all the problems of the day can be reduced almost exclusively to the outside influence of others...
The second group is much smaller in number. It is partly composed of elements which previously belonged to the first group, but after long and bitter disappointments shifted to the opposite and no longer believe anything that comes before their eyes in all, or without exception fly into a rage over the contents, since in their opinion they consist only of lies and falsehoods. These people are very hard to handle, since they are suspicious even in the face of the truth...
The third group, finally, is by far the smallest; it consists of the minds with real mental subtlety, whom natural gifts and education have taught to think independently, who try to form their own judgement of all things, and who subject everything they read to a thorough examination and further development of their own. They will not look at a newspaper without always collaborating in their minds, and the writer has no easy time of it. Journalists love such readers with the greatest reserve.
For the members of this third group, it must be admitted, the nonsense that newspaper scribblers can put down is not very dangerous or even very important. Most of them in the course of their lives have learned to regard every journalist as a rascal on principle, who tells the truth only once in a blue moon. Unfortunately, however, the importance of these splendid people lies only in their intelligence and not in their number -- a misfortune at a time when wisdom is nothing and the majority is everything! Today, when the ballot of the masses decides, the chief weight lies with the most numerous group, and this is the first: the mob of the simple or credulous."
--Mein Kampf
Seventy years later, in the United States, only one alteration in Hitler's view of the press would be required.
Nowadays, even the journalists seem to have joined "the mob of the simple or credulous".
Good discussion you may not have seen!
Maybe not the arrears, but there was a link. From last December: Link is seen to California in Enron flop
Enron's flop into bankruptcy, which has been characterized as a monumental but isolated corporate failure, is closely tied to the collapse of deregulation in California, some experts say.
These experts point to evidence that Enron's missteps in California, and the steps taken to end the electricity crisis, weakened the company to a point where it could be felled by the misdeeds of top officers.
"To be sure, most industry experts insist that Enron fell because of accounting violations and a failure by top officers to fulfill their fiduciary duty."
And did you note who authored the article? The very same Craig D. Rose who authored the piece at the beginning of this thread.
There is a visceral need, born of political survival instinct, for the Davis administration to blame the Cal Power Crisis on somebody other than themselves. It being defunct, discredited and unable to defend itself, Enron neatly fills their bill.
As a corollary, it also allows the Davis administration to actually take "credit" for bringing Enron down. "See", they say, "Gray Davis was right all along. Ken Lay and Enron were evil. And, by stiffing them, we were responsible for slaying the dragon."
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