Tom Fudge:
It's been nearly six years since rolling blackouts hit California during the energy crisis. And a lot has happened since then. Enron, one of the companies that swindled California rate payers, is bankrupt, its top executives convicted of crime. Everybody agrees that market manipulation was at the core of California's problems that year. And everybody agrees that the state's first stab at energy deregulation was a failure.
But does that mean that free energy markets in California are a thing of the past? What has happened to bring energy prices under control? And could price spikes happen again?
Those questions are addressed in a report published by the Public Policy Institute of California. The report is called, “California's Electricity Market: A Post-Crisis Report.” The man who wrote it is Carl Pechman, president of Power Economics, based in Santa Cruz.
Guest
- Carl Pechman , author of "California's Electricity Market: A Post-Crisis Progress Report" for the Public Policy Institute of California. Dr. Pechman is the president of Power Economics. He was also the head of a group of investigators who analyzed the infamous Enron tapes, in which traders boasted of their market scams.
End Music: Throw it on a Fire by the Bell Orchestre, from the album Recording a Tape the Color of the Light (2005)
