"A Laissez-Faire Market in Large-Scale Power Generation Won't Work"

"The story briskly moves to modern times, sketching out the state's incompetent attempt at electric market deregulation at the turn of the new millennium. Politicians and regulators were played for chumps by Wall Street sharpies, and PG&E customers suffered rolling blackouts as the not-quite-free market failed to provide a reliable supply of electricity. 'It was arguably one of the most complicated heists ever undertaken in California,' Blunt writes."

Russ Mitchell at the Los Angeles Times reviews Katherine Blunt's California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric—and What It Means for America's Power Grid.

And the Times runs an excerpt from Blunt's book.

What's Going on with Gas Prices?

"The fear premium is the froth above what prices would be absent fears of a supply disruption - somewhere in the $80 to $85 range for a barrel of crude oil. It means that even with the extra cost put on oil from Iran fears, prices are at least another $10 higher than what demand fundamentals would dictate.
"Why? Financial speculators."

Kevin G. Hall explains in The Miami Herald.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/21/v-fullstory/2653429/once-again-speculators-behind.html#storylink=cpy

"The Product of Our Own Contradictions"

"'Deregulation' is wonderful until we discover what happens when regulations aren't issued or enforced. Everyone is a capitalist until a private company blunders. Then everyone starts talking like a socialist, presuming that the government can put things right because they see it as being just as big and powerful as its tea party critics claim."

E. J. Dionne, Jr., in The New Republic casts his gaze toward the oil hemorrhaging in the Gulf of Mexico.

An Inconvenient Issue

"On June 9, three days after the emissions cap-and-trade bill died in the Senate, Obama led McCain by eight points, according to Gallup. By June 24, the race was in a dead heat, a shift owed in no small part to Republicans battering Democrats on energy. Seeing the writing on the wall, Obama reversed his opposition to drilling in August, and congressional Democrats quickly followed suit.
"But the damage has largely been done. In following greens, Democrats allowed McCain and Republicans to cast them as the party out of touch with the pocketbook concerns of middle-class Americans and captive to special interests that prioritize remote wilderness over economic prosperity."

In the Los Angeles Times, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger discuss how this summer's high oil prices helped the Republicans and hurt the Democrats.