But first, a word from Ronnie…

Ah, yes, the seldom discussed flip side of Mr. Reagan’s infamous “from the government” quote returns to bite near frozen texans right in their ongoing, deregulated ERCOT energy experiment. I would ordinarily expect some light bulbs to finally be going off concerning the exploitive tendencies of privately run utilities, but with the the lengthy power outages, I may have to make an exception. And from my research down this latest Texas (& US) energy industry rabbit hole with it’s multitude of energy suppliers and traders using computer modeling sleight of hand to tier energy pricing when the weather favorably misbehaves ($$$), this ain’t the first time! Which begs the question… how many kicks upside the head does it take make a society, Texas, California or otherwise USA, realize the exploitive downside opportunities that an unregulated free market enables for those corporate entities chompin’ at the bit to make your hard earned cash theirs? A ten times increase in the average winter heating bill?! Oh my. Who needs corona spike proteins when you have free market price gouging? Do you remember Enron’s misdeeds? There “How to Price Gouge” manual still exists. Could it be that Texas energy broker ERCOT, California based Griddy, etc, are practicing for an even bigger sleight of hand that’s coming as pollution change intensifies? This unanticipated ten to one hundred times increase in winter/summer energy may just become a regular occurrence! Welcome to the brutal realty of Unregulated Free Market Capitalism… financial terrorism, Texas style!

What truly amazes me, what our sucker society doesn’t seem to get (yet)… the only thing worse than an intrusive busy body government is an even more intrusive busy body, private corporation (Big-Tech/Energy/Pharma etc), especially if it’s a multi-national corporation and/or has a Wall Street, London, Brussels or Silly-Con Valley address! Either way, we are forced to choose between the devil we know, our corrupt bureaucratic government, or the equally corrupt corporate devil whose wily ways we’re slowly getting acquainted with as he waves his shiny, sparkly, promise of a cheaper “better deal”. Right.

So which devil dropped the ball? How did this happen in a country Pavlov conditioned to believe that the private corporation can be unquestionably trusted to self regulate and serve it’s customers fairly, to serve it’s customers better than the evil “public utility”? “Regulations? We don’t need no stinkin regulations!!”, sayeth the national/globalist promoters of Corporate Personhood. The fingers seem to be pointing everywhere as Texas Governor Greg Abbott scrambles to manage the post freeze fallout and keep already covid weary citizens from throwin in the towel, saying fk it, and telling the Texas utilities to “Kiss my cactus! Can we pay you in dirt?!”. Twenty bucks and a beat up ZZ “Tres Hombres” says the perpe-traitors (to a Fair For All economic system) don’t do the prison time, don’t get any more disciplinary action than an approving kiss on the cheek from Cancun Cruz (LUV that!). According to Ed Hirs, a fellow econo hailing from the University of Houston, “ERCOT’s job is to create an orderly and reliable (energy) market…but the (legal) filing essentially described a built-in flaw that encourages any trickster to take advantage of it… This is a multi-billion enterprise that is unable and unwilling to repair mistakes.” Wow. Trickster?! You don’t say. This is making California’s PG&E look saintly!

And speaking of California, it seems we have a little more in common with Texas than just Griddy energy and a love for Country Western music. Back in August 2020, California had suspicious rolling blackouts. Ours were supposedly due to a light summer heat wave that over demanded the power grid. What’s interesting was that not only had Cali’s independent system operator, CAISO, purchased more than enough electricity from the power sellers the day before, but on the day(s) of the rolling blackout the electricity demand was less than normal for that time of year! WTF?! Enter deregulations good buddy, Donald Trump. 

According to former California Public Utilities Commissioner Loretta Lynch commenting on CAISO and the August 2020 rolling blackouts, “So what they’re doing is once again, not pointing fingers at the Trump administration’s lax rules, that allow the electricity sellers to withhold power until the price goes up. Instead, they’re blaming renewable energy that they work with every hour of every day successfully.” 

Did you catch that? “The Trump administration’s lax rules”. And gee whiz, ain’t blaming renewable energy  getting to be a popular pastime these days? I actually heard Ms. Lynch on a AM radio interview that summer mentioning that Trump (administration?) had done away with all the regulations on the books to prevent another Enron style power grid price gouge. A favor to his Wall Street and Big Energy campaign contributors, I’m sure. Sadly, exactly what those regs were seem to be beyond my research capabilities and exceeded my frustration tolerance. But, on the one website I found that listed all of Trump’s repealed regulations (buried in Bookmarks. I’ll get back to you – Ed), there were pages and pages and pages and pages of them… and all in government speak! Sorry kids, I ain’t gettin paid for this so you’ll have to settle for the numerous vetted links I’m already providing.

Apparently Griddy, the California based Texas energy wholesaler,  tried to advise it’s customers to switch to another Texas based electricity supplier before the anticipated (massive) electricity price hikes kicked in, a couple days before the Cactus Cold Front came barreling through. Opps. It seems those ultra fast computers that are all the rage these days ain’t so ultra fast when a request to change providers NOW is computer/smart phone requested. Interesting. What should have been digitally computer “instant”, as Big-Tech would like to have us all believe, had a curious delay of at least a couple days for the request to “Get me out of Griddy NOW!” transaction to complete. Selective Speed programed into the software? Ya didn’t hear it from me! “Nothing to see here folks! Let’s keep the line movin!… Bill Gates has left the building!”

In a recent interview, California based Griddy energy’s CEO Greg Craig said, “here is what we do know… the market is supposed to set the prices, not political appointees.” Hoo Haw! (West Texas, Bakersfield speak) The “market”, with the help of Wall Street/California city slicker computer software, just did set prices!!… ie, exploitive pricing triggered by financially favorable weather conditions! Hot weather, freezing cold weather, torrential rain; it doesn’t matter cuz it all sounds the same to the speculative energy traders… Ca-Ching $$$. Exactly as computer planned! Uh, so why are all you free market promoting big babies crying? Ain’t this the Unregulated Free Market you’ve been wet dreaming of…  just doing what it’s computer programed to do? Oh please. You ain’t going “Hypocrite” on us now, are ya darlin? 

A timely last word of advice from former Commissioner Lynch on how California, and just maybe Texas etc, should re-evaluate how it manages its electrical grid, “I think we need to take a real hard look at whether this system still works for us,” said Lynch last August, “because I don’t think it protects the consumer, I think it protects the energy seller. And that’s the last group we want to protect because they have enough money to protect themselves.” Hmmm, maybe a decentralized power grid run by local communities (once upon a time USA) and not so much by computers is a partial solution. It’s also less vulnerable to security breeches. Can you say national security issue?! Just askin.

So, what’s in this for me, is there a silver lining here? Hell Yes!! And it’s a silver lining that I really really wish I no longer had to exploit. But, hey, when you live in a Blue Pill Sucker Society… you see, Texas’s tax payer’s recent misfortune is my Flea Market Economist opportunity to expose, once again (About The FME), the fallacy of our self-inflicted “free market” myth… that a Wild West, any damn Wall Street/New York/Houston city slicker, free market excuse you can think of is fine and dandy as long as it’s served as either “unregulated” or “deregulated”. Hmmmm, weren’t those two of Donald Trump’s and two of Bill Clinton’s favorite words? (birds of a feather? tweet!) Clinton’s semi-apologetic repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act that separated Main Street Banking from speculative Wall Street “investment” banking, the easy action that kicked open the doors for Big Finance/Energy funny business, giving the ravenous energy speculators, er uh, “managers”, even more effective algorithmic tools to manipulate the energy market… and here we are, “all in this together”, suffering the friggin consequences. Grrrrr! Brrrrrrrr!

Ladies and gents, my fellow Flea Marketeers, I do hope you are now seeing how an unregulated/deregulated free market system enables all this greedy, power mongering exploitation to thrive at our expense and the necessity for enforceable Fed/State government (that’s us kids!!) regulations to keep these ravenous, heartless vultures from robbing us blind. Bottom line: when you get down to it, the privately held corporate trickster doesn’t give a fig fart about it’s customers unless there are laws, regulation and enforcement making sure they do. Their only concern is profit and their “fiduciary responsibility” to their share holders. If you are not a shareholder and only a lowly customer, guess what, you’re fkd!… unless of course, you get up in your righteous indignation and fight back. Former Texas Ag Commissioner Jim Hightower’s “The Lowdown” is a great quick read resource for local, grassroots, actionable suggestions. For those residing in Texas and other energy deregulation states affected by the recent winter freeze, that exploitation I mentioned above is now on your February energy bill. Smile! “Payment due by… or else!!”

Mr. Myth Buster, Dismal Dave Lancon, continuing to challenge the economic hypocrisy © February 2021 All Rights Reserved. Reagan caption, by yours truly. Dereg map, screen save Electric Choice