[vision-master]

Capitalism at work.

The Energy Policy Act of 1992 further encouraged private companies to get involved in producing electrical energy and provided many incentives for electrical start-up companies. While a small electric company could just as easily sell power as a huge hydroelectric dam, the price for the power was still kept low and the consumer, you and I, were as worried about our 115 volts as were about the Sun rising the next morning. By 1998, during the Clinton presidency, power was still a great buy. The markets were by then sophisticated, with different price structures being offered for volume consumers, like large cities or factories, and with different rates for power delivered during peak hours and less expensive power delivered at off-peak hours. The price of electricity was still based on the cost of fuel but the consumption was regulated by encouraging high power users to consume electricity when the demand on the entire system was low, and the price was substantially reduced. Then, in December of 1998, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission changed everything.

Words like "free market" and "free trade" sound great. In fact, Americans love anything that is free. We value free-dom, our free-space, free-range chickens, free gifts and free love. Hardly anyone paid attention to the concept of a "free market electrical system" when it was proposed, and on May 1st, 1999, America had its "free market" for electricity. As everyone would soon learn, it was anything but free.

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[Tyler_JC]

Where to begin...

The kind of fraud that he was talking about was largely the result of Enron's illegal activities.

On some days prices skyrocket. On other days the price crashes. It's volatile. You were paying for the volatility before, you just didn't know it. Now we have minute by minute pricing and if the market were truly free, you could know exactly how much power cost at any given moment, giving you the opportunity to adjust your power consumption accordingly.

In order to really modernize the electricity market we NEED a smart grid that can manage both supply and demand by giving both consumers and producers up to the minute information. Currently, suppliers have a vague idea of what electricity will cost at any given time and consumers, for the most part, are utterly clueless. I don't know when I'm supposed to turn on my dishwasher to maximize grid efficiency so I just run it whenever I feel like. That kind of behavior wrecks havoc on the power supply and it's a miracle we don't have more blackouts than we do.



Multiply that by a billion.

[Novus]

That doesn't really tell the whole story of how the Rip offs happened. Under deregulation sectors of the electrical grid were cut up into smaller and smaller blocks. The small blocks of the grid were then assigned how much power they needed to run on any particular day of the year in a publicly traded energy market. This allowed energy speculators with billions of dollars to buy up every bit of power that would be sold on any particular day. An energy speculator would target a block of the grid and buy every up every single available watt in an attempt to corner the market and choke the competition. Every time a watt of energy would be put up of sale it would instantly be bought by speculator run computers. These speculators became known as power brokers of which Enron was the king.

The power brokers repeatedly targeted blocks of the grid where businesses and consumers were mostly likely to be buying such as the NYC energy block or the LA energy block. The power brokers repeatedly attacked these energy blocks with their billions in speculator cash buying up every available watt. This created the illusion of energy shortages in the North East and California. Without actually generating any new power prices went up and consumers got hosed by the power brokers who made money hand over fist year after year when deregulation took effect.

It was indeed one of the great American rip offs but in reality it was small potatoes compared to what the bankers got away with during the housing boom and subsequent bust and government bailout. We have become Nation of con men and capitalism in essence is the art of the Rip Off.

[pablonite]

It was indeed one of the great American rip offs but in reality it was small potatoes compared to what the bankers got away with during the housing boom and subsequent bust and government bailout. We have become Nation of con men and capitalism in essence is the art of the Rip Off.

It's all the potatoes. Owned is the only way to describe it properly. A handful of elites are now offically in control of most governments, multinational corps including our media and of course have the military as part and parcel.

Get ready for things to get oppressive in the extreme. Not extreme in the historical sense but extreme in the first world corn fed couch potatoe sense. The boomers are about to get the fleecing of their life while the disenchanted xyz generations zone out and wait their turn. The timing and engineering that went into this is pure genius really.

[PrestonSturges]

And they'll do the same thing with drinking water and the air you breath if they can.

[vision-master]

And they'll do the same thing with drinking water and the air you breath if they can.

I get my drinking water from a spring 150 miles North of here.