Passing the buck
A side benefit of moving to decentralized, renewable electricity would be getting out from under these guys:
As California’s deadliest wildfire was consuming the town of Paradise in November, some of the state’s top power company officials and a dozen legislators were at an annual retreat at the Fairmont Kea Lani resort on Maui. In the course of four days, they discussed wildfires — and how much responsibility the utilities deserve for the devastation, if any.
It is an issue of increasing urgency as more fires are traced to equipment owned by California’s investor-owned utilities. The largest, Pacific Gas and Electric, could ultimately have to pay homeowners and others an estimated $30 billion for causing fires over the last two years. The most devastating of those, the Camp Fire, destroyed thousands of homes in Paradise and killed at least 86 people.
Realizing that their potential fire liability is large enough to bankrupt them, the utility companies are spending tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions. Their goal: a California law that would allow them to pass on the cost of wildfires to their customers in the form of higher electricity rates.
Plus update on the saga here.
“Five Things They Don’t Tell You About Law & Economics”
A new video from APPEAL – the Association for the Promotion of Political Economy and the Law – challenges the “pro-efficiency” and “anti-regulation” ideology purveyed under the banner of “Law and Economics”:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoak05emri4&feature=youtu.be
Wasted: The high cost of laissez-screw finance
What has the flawed financial system cost the U.S. economy? Here’s your receipt:
Read the accounting by Econ4’s Jerry Epstein together with Juan Montecino here. Excerpt follows:
A healthy financial system is one that channels finance to productive investment, helps families save for and finance big expenses such as higher education and retirement, provides products such as insurance to help reduce risk, creates sufficient amounts of useful liquidity, runs an efficient payments mechanism, and generates financial innovations to do all these useful things more cheaply and effectively. All of these functions are crucial to a stable and productive market economy. But after decades of deregulation, the current U.S. financial system has evolved into a highly speculative system that has failed rather spectacularly at performing these critical tasks.
What has this flawed financial system cost the U.S. economy? How much have American families, taxpayers, and businesses been “overcharged” as a result of these questionable financial activities? In this report, we estimate these costs by analyzing three components: (1) rents, or excess profits; (2) misallocation costs, or the price of diverting resources away from non-financial activities; and (3) crisis costs, meaning the cost of the 2008 financial crisis.
Talk about perverse incentives
More guns -> more deaths -> more guns. A vicious circle becomes a business model:
While the country reels from a series of mass shootings, each one reigniting the debate over the regulation of firearms, the hottest investments in the stock market seem to be shares of gun manufacturers.
Read it and weep: here.
Value creation v. value extraction
Bill Lazonick writes in the Harvard Business Review:
The debate over how to reverse ever-increasing income inequality has moved front and center in the Democratic presidential campaign. In speeches on July 13 and July 24, front-runner Hillary Clinton first outlined and then elaborated upon her policy agenda for combating what she calls “quarterly capitalism.” In emphasizing the need for value-creating business investment in an economy in which value-extracting financial interests are driving corporate resource-allocation decisions, the Clinton economic reform package is novel and refreshing for a Democratic presidential contender….
But perhaps the most elegant solution is one Clinton has not yet advocated: simply banning corporations from making open-market repurchases of their shares.
Read Lazonick’s piece here. See Econ4’s Jerry Epstein take on this issue here.
Monopoly power v. solar power
The Washington Post reports from the electricity battleground in the clean energy transition, where surprising political realignments are emerging:
“Conservatives support solar — they support it even more than progressives do,” said Bryan Miller, co-chairman of the Alliance for Solar Choice and a vice president of public policy for Sunrun, a California solar provider. “It’s about competition in its most basic form. The idea that you should be forced to buy power from a state-sponsored monopoly and not have an option is about the least conservative thing you can imagine.”
Read more here.
Learning from history
A new animation sums up the differences between the “Golden Age”of 1948-71 and the “Great Moderation” of 1985-2007:
Source: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/05/myth-great-moderation.html.
Coming soon to a market near you
Matt Taibbi on another improvised explosive device buried in bank deregulation – one that could lead to the biggest bang yet:
Banks aren’t just buying stuff, they’re buying whole industrial processes. They’re buying oil that’s still in the ground, the tankers that move it across the sea, the refineries that turn it into fuel, and the pipelines that bring it to your home. Then, just for kicks, they’re also betting on the timing and efficiency of these same industrial processes in the financial markets – buying and selling oil stocks on the stock exchange, oil futures on the futures market, swaps on the swaps market, etc.
Allowing one company to control the supply of crucial physical commodities, and also trade in the financial products that might be related to those markets, is an open invitation to commit mass manipulation. It’s something akin to letting casino owners who take book on NFL games during the week also coach all the teams on Sundays….
The irony was incredible. After fucking up so badly that the government had to give them federal bank charters and bottomless wells of free cash to save their necks, the feds gave Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley hall passes to become cross-species monopolistic powers with almost limitless reach into any sectors of the economy.
Read more here.
Who’s afraid of rooftop solar?
Wanting to preserve the centralized electric power system and guaranteed returns of 10%, the nation’s electric utilities are ramping up to quash the threat posed by rooftop solar panels, writes Diane Caldwell in the New York Times:
For years, power companies have watched warily as solar panels have sprouted across the nation’s rooftops. Now, in almost panicked tones, they are fighting hard to slow the spread.
Read more here.
Bankers resist stronger capital requirements
Gretchen Morgenson writes in today’s Times:
OUR nation’s largest banks have grown accustomed to regulators who are respectful, deferential and mindful of these institutions’ needs and desires. So, last week, when federal financial overseers unveiled a potent new weapon against too-big-to-fail banks, it seemed as if — just maybe — the winds in Washington were shifting.
Read more here.
