Republican candidates and Mitt
Romney say deregulation is the way to go. Heck, they know what they’re talking
about, because many of them have been corporate executives themselves, right?
Oh, didn’t they tell you, you’ll be paying a lot more of
your hard earned money to those same deregulated corporations, because...well, that’s
capitalism. Go tea party.
Financial Times: The US electricity regulator has subpoenaed JPMorgan Chase twice in the past three months investigating whether the bank manipulated power markets in California and the Midwest region.
In Wisconsin alone...
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said the bank’s bidding practices may have inflated electricity costs by at least $73m.
Remember “the California energy crisis of 2000-01, when
Enron and other traders were accused of rigging supplies and causing blackouts.”
FERC has in the past year alleged Barclays and Deutsche Bank manipulated electricity markets and has compelled Constellation Energy to pay $245m to settle another case.
JPMorgan is already under intense scrutiny since (they experienced) $2bn in trading losses related to credit derivatives.
The bank’s commodities business owns or has rights to output from several electric generators (and may have) extracted “inflated” or “excessive” payments from two wholesale power markets serving California and several Midwest states..
This manipulation, and inflated payments, are ultimately paid
for you and me, "businesses and government entities that are the end consumers
of electricity,” the FERC wrote.
Anybody for deregulation? That’s what the Republicans are
running on.
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