Word: middlemen
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...over California: there is more than enough electricity to go around. Like those in many other states that are taking a less radical approach to deregulation, such as Michigan and New Jersey, Pennsylvania's incumbent utilities were not required to sell the bulk of their power plants and become middlemen, vulnerable to the price spikes in the wholesale market. Even if they chose to purchase from other generators, they were allowed to lock in reasonable prices with long-term contracts instead of relying on the daily spot market. "As usual, California fired before they aimed," says Tom Hill, chief financial...
...California dismantled its private power-generating industry without securing adequate power supplies. The Big Three utilities, which in addition to PG&E and SCE include San Diego Gas & Electric, sold off plants to outsiders like Duke Energy of Charlotte, N.C., and Reliant Energy of Houston and became middlemen. But the state wouldn't allow these new intermediaries to enter long-term purchasing agreements for fear they would be locked into fixed-price contracts as prices dropped. Their purchases had to be made on the so-called spot--or cash--market, and prices were low at the time...
Electricity deregulation, of course, wasn't supposed to work this way. When the state's monopoly was broken up in 1998, Californians were told power would become more plentiful. Utilities would sell off their plants to private generators, like Dynegy and Duke Energy, and then act as middlemen, bidding on the open market for electricity and distributing it to their customers. But with the booming high-tech economy sucking up power, barely a week goes by without warnings of rolling blackouts or outages...
...Madeleine Albright tells TIME. But should the U.S. now step aside and let another broker try his hand at negotiating a peace, say U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan or the European Union? The Palestinians would like to internationalize future negotiations, believing they would get a better hearing from other middlemen, but Israel deeply distrusts the U.N. or European intermediaries. "We are the only country that can actually get something done," insists Albright. "It isn't we that are seeking the central role. They come...
...despite talk of Internet "disintermediation"--the elimination of middlemen--there will probably still be agents, producers and even record companies to sign up new artists and market their work. Digital-music service providers--the much touted alternatives to traditional record companies--will probably have a harder time than major labels taking an album to gold or platinum. "We'll be fine," says Atlantic Records Group co-chairman Val Azzoli. "There will always be new music, and it's our job t o figure out what people want to hear and when they want to hear...