I agree with you completely. What I was trying to tell the reporter was that sometimes a one-for-one sale may make sense and be a legitimate transaction.
Some times such a sale could also be a sign of something corrupt going on. Your example is such an example.
The point I was trying to make was that we should wait for a few more details before we condemn all the power companies for gaming the system. From what I have heard so far, I expect that the amount of corrupt market gaming was minimal, but existed and was practiced by a few players. I am really upset that so many people are jumping to the conclusion that Enron and everyone else was "gaming the market." Although it appears that Cal ISO was improperly asking folks to submit false bids, which seems to get little media play.
Yesterday, I was at a RTO-West workshop. It was quite interesting, especially when we discussed how the RTO was going to try to prevent folks from gaming transmission markets. At that point a whole bunch of insiders started to talk about how the Cal ISO allowed folks to consistently underschedule and how the Cal ISO should have been shot for that and how that created a panic near impossible real time market for immediate power. They assured those of us in the audience that schedules would would not be allowed to be biased and if there were a detectible bias, then the scheduler would be banned from the RTO. A utility manager talked about his Cal ISO experience where he visited the nice new building with all curved walls. He is a professional engineer and use to work at the other office of the electric utility consulting company I work for so he is pretty sharp. He said he looked at the dispatch board in the Cal ISO and asked a dispatcher why a transmission line breaker was shown as closed when the real time displays showed different frequencies on either side of the breaker. The dispatcher looked around and then asked this utility manager to come with him away from the tour. The Dispatcher then explained that the impressive display board was for display and not for real use. The utility manager was reminded of the time when Enron had secretaries pretending to be power traders for a bond tour.
Bottom line there may have been some corrupt energy traders, but I think the heart of the problem when the dust settles is going to be Cal-ISO.
NOUN:Something that appears elaborate and impressive but in actual fact lacks substance: “the Potemkin village of this country's borrowed prosperity” (Lewis H. Lapham).ETYMOLOGY:
After Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin, who had elaborate fake villages constructed for Catherine the Great's tours of the Ukraine and the Crimea