Re:Texas poised to get own stock exchange – with less red ta...
by while_true_ on Wednesday June 05, 2024 @11:11AM
(#40585846)
Enron is the poster child of how opening the energy grid to an unregulated free market makes it ripe for price rigging and manipulation. Enron was famous for trading strategies like "Fat Boy" and "Death Star" where they would do things like submit fake energy schedules to create the illusion of congestion on transmission rights they own to collect payments for relieving the congestion the next day, which wasn't actually going to happen. Energy markets need regulations and oversight to prevent bad actors from ripping off utilities, which ultimately get passed on to ratepayers via higher rates.
Re:Texas poised to get own stock exchange – with less red ta...
by cosmic_quanta on Wednesday June 05, 2024 @11:36AM
(#40586195)
Absolutely, these "deregulated" markets still need oversight. And there is oversight: look at what happened with JPMorgan manipulating energy markets [0].
My issue is, "deregulation of electricity markets" means "unbundling vertically-integrated utilities", not "removing oversight". This Texas Stock Exchange is about removing oversight.
[0]: https://apnews.com/ferc-jpmorgan-owes-410m-for-price-manipul...
Deregulation of power grids (which has been done throughout the US, not only in Texas) isn't the same as removing red tape in financial reporting. It's about removing oversight of large, vertically-integrated utilities by fostering competition of unintegrated market participants.
Deregulating power grids has been such a success for flexibility and renewable energy integration that the European Union codified it into law in 2019.
Is it working perfectly in Texas? Absolutely not. Is it an example of utter failure of "deregulation"? Absolutely not!