No. That's too obvious even for Grubbinerr Goofblob. I am musing that perhaps someone has something to gain by having Peevey and Geesman there and that whatever substantive compensation these folks derive is probably ensconsed on Grand Cayman.
Or is he responding to pressure from potential Bond buyers and placing people that they suggest on these key boards as I guess Robert357 is suggesting! Obviously there is some kind of political calculus going on!
There never isn't, in the case of Gray Davis. Think of the Third Whirled debt game. Guaranteed debt at high prices. The traders make out. The underwriters make out. Even if there is a default they just roll it over and start again at higher rates, and perhaps flushing some complicit and bag-holding dependent suckers' money while the traders and Wall Street biggies "magically" escape (CalPERS comes to mind as a complicit chump). The underlying premise is that Davis doesn't do anything that isn't for campaign money. He has a LOT of it. Why should such a glaring "incompetent" get that kind of funding if he couldn't deliver, if only by "virtue" of the predictability of his idiotic behavior?
Davis is the total control freak. Everything he has done, without exception (as DG reminded us the other day), has cost us more than if he had just left things alone. It is impossible (in my opinion) for a complete incompetent to screw up that often without being right at least occasionally (constructive errors). That extra money went somewhere and it wasn't the utilities (whose value is in being able to collect the bills at the penalty of cutting the power). It is entirely possible that Wall Street is more than willing to sacrifice SCE for their (Davis & Bryson, et al.) complicit role in making them money in bonds at the expense of unwitting shareholders. That would fit Bryson's historic MO quite nicely. Certainly he is no fool. How much would the necessary sacrificial SCE grub stake cost to get Bryson in there to do his bit compared to the cash made on natural gas sales and debt service on prices inflated by Davis carefully calculated contract trades? How cheap will SCE be to buy and then "reorganize," then to collect on those long-term contracts? Looks like a cheap "loss," doesn't it?
The Big Money boys are getting their payback in some fashion but it is not obvious to me how the payback is executed!
I think you have an idea though!