4h40m15s24f California Blackouts - Competing Narratives - Smoking Gun Enron Audio Tape - TR2016a
Channel: Thorium Remix
Date: 15/05/2017

http://ThoriumRemix.com/ During the height of Wednesday's blackout, fire crews had to free people trapped in elevators. The idea of playing elevator roulette may sound funny but try living with it.
Let's go, let's go!
Come on! Come on.
My baby!

Put yourself in the middle of California, during the summer of 2000, when blackouts began to roll across the state.

Sacramento, San Francisco, Beverly Hills, Long Beach, San Diego.

The energy crisis would cost California 40 billion dollars.

For the second day in a row not enough electricity for America's largest state, and the world's sixth largest economy.
I- I can feel for them, I was out of power four times this weekend, for a total of over 10 hours. 
They simply wasn't enough electricity available.

As the blackouts continued, there were competing narratives presented by the media. One such narrative was: This is just an unusual heat wave, generating capacity is going to catch up.
Today we know- there was much more to it than that.

The first thing we heard about this energy crisis is our lights are going to go off in the middle of winter, when we're using half the electricity we normally use during the summer!

We had an installed capacity in California at the time of 45,000 megawatts. Plenty of power! We only need 28,000 to 30,000 megawatts in December. Of course we had blackouts in December. The numbers just didn't add up. We'll had enough power in California, it was never about lack of supply.

You know, talking about OPEC puts me in mind of a simpler time, when the energy interest we were held hostage to were American ones. Given the complexity and dryness of the subject it seemed impossible that charges could ever be proven- unless... somehow... somebody turned up some sort of smoking gun. Which brings us to last week-

Hey John, it's Tim.
Regulatory's all in a big concern about is we're wheeling power out of California.

Two Enron traders discuss a colleagual manipulation of the California power market.

He just F***** California. He steals money from California to the tune of about-
Will you rephrase that?
Ok, he um- he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day.
Right!

Jon Stewart:
Those greedy mother arbitrageurs!
Oooohhh!