241–250 of 281 posts
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The regulator set prices at $9000 with the idea that the high price would reduce the shortage.
And it did. Plenty of Texans were reducing their power usage to the absolute bare minimum once they got word of how expensive power had just become.
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Calling that personal benefit when they were hit by a massive surge in supply pricing is shifting the blame a bit, no? Realistically, since the creditors are probably private and the customers, which would otherwise face the loss, are the community, it's actually somewhat the reverse - privatized losses to the benefit of the community (which would otherwise need to pay off the surge in electricity pricing).
But they were benefiting. They have had years of not winterizing their systems, which helped them earn quarter after quarter of profits. Those profits were paid to executives and shareholders, who will not help make up the shortfall now.
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If you don't like the supermarket or farm, you can shop elsewhere. The infrastructure that brings food to our tables is roads and railways, the power grid which brings electricity to refrigerators and freezers, and water and sewage utilities. A supermarket or a farm are not part of our infrastructure. They may be "vital" but they are not infrastructure. You (as an individual) can't really comparison shop for infrastr…
In your analogy, where the grid corresponds to roads and railways, the equivalent of the supermarket or farm is a wholesale electricity provider or power plant, right? In Massachusetts you can absolutely comparison shop for specific power plants or sets thereof as an individual, at least to the extent of explicitly picking which generation company your money goes to by default. Of course in the end the way the grid w…
Going to stop you right there. I wasn’t making any analogies. I was talking in literal terms.
What happens if they go bankrupt? Does anyone know what plan B) is for people getting their electricity from this company?
Customers are automatically moved to a Provider Of Last Resort (POLR). No interruption in service, but (likely) dramatically higher prices.
I'm not aware of any mechanism that could force their customers (who are also the owners) into that market.
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Shareholders already do get a penalty. The company gets fined which impacts future profitability and the stock price, thereby impacting shareholders. Also, most often the shareholders of large companies have no knowledge of illegal behaviour because the responsible stakeholders/executives inside the org are hiding that information. Enron is an example. What we need is more executive accountability. For example jail s…
Right now, as a share holder I don't really care about what the company does, only that the stonks go up. There is no financial motivation for me to care. Sure, stonks can go to zero, but I still don't care. I have a very diversified portfolio (5k positions) because stonks go to zero all the time, even if companies don't do anything illegal. If I were liable, I would have to care, because one position could bring dow…
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The "deregulated" energy industry is built around that exact principle you're talking about, both in the US and the EU. The "platform" is the grid, which delivers electricity from plants to homes and businesses. Because competition in this area is limited, these companies are regulated monopolies, whose infrastructure decisions and rates are closely supervised by a government energy board. These entities work as part…
It would seem that an important part of the "market" is missing, namely the ability of consumers to respond to price signals. If every customer could set a maximum price and automatically be cut off when the price goes higher then the load shedding would be automatic, with the available power going to those willing to pay more, presumably because they need it more or can afford it.
One of my takeaways is that you really don't want people trying to attempt DIY heating systems. There were ~450 calls for carbon monoxide poisoning, related to people trying to heat their homes with non-electric sources or sources that worked at all. A lot of people tried to run camping stoves indoors. Others ran generators indoors. I believe a girl died because her family tried to stay warm in the car in the garage with the door closed.
> with the available power going to those willing to pay more, presumably because they need it more or can afford it.
I vehemently disagree with this. Wealthy customers should not be able to push the price of electricity high enough that others can't afford to heat their homes. Letting the market figures it out means that those with financial means get to make a choice about what to do, while the poor are universally shoehorned into the worse of the two options.
A significant part of the base load is inelastic demand. People need to heat their homes. People need their refrigerator to work so their food doesn't go bad in a time when you may or may not be able to get groceries. People need to charge their cellphones so they can let their family know that they're okay.
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I don't see why solar in Arizona would not help Maine. If Maine has a shortage, they aren't going to get power directly from Arizona, but couldn't they get power from New Hampshire? If New Hampshire doesn't have any spare capacity, couldn't they still supply Maine and get some from Massachusetts to cover for what they send to Maine? And if Massachusetts doesn't have any spare, can't they similarly go ahead and supply…
The transmission grids aren’t connected like that.
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Interestingly you are ignoring the part that Amazon paid no income tax at all in 2018 and 2017.
At least it was accurate. I don't think anyone here is cheering tax evasion on or denying there are problems There clearly are. Let's at least be honest about it though.
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"After two straight years of paying $0 in U.S. federal income tax, Amazon was on the hook for a $162 million bill in 2019" "$162 million is still just a fraction of the $13.9 billion in pre-tax income Amazon reported for 2019 — roughly 1.2%" How much is your income tax rate?
According to their 2019 annual income statement[0], Amazon paid a total of $2.374B of foreign and domestic income tax on pre-tax income of $13.976B. That's 16.9%, not 1.2%. Is the author perhaps comparing US taxes with global income? (Or perhaps just whatever was left over after paying estimated taxes?) That certainly looks to be the case since they cited US federal income tax while the $13.9B pre-tax income figure i…
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> You can bet your bottom dollar that they’ll be buying their own assets back on cents on the dollar, reincorporating, putting everyone back in the same positions, and paying some nice fat bonuses out of the capital they’ll be given as part of their dynamic chapter 11 restructure. [citation very much needed]
What exactly are you looking for a citation for? The GP was stating their strong belief regarding a future event and (I assume) facetiously saying you should bet on it.