Worth anyone's time: Smartest Guys in the Room is one of Alex Gibney's firsts. Contrary to the Wikipedia article, the basic driver of the California electricity crisis was Enron's ability to use monopoly power to charge PG&E and SoCal Edison whatever they felt like through market manipulation. PG&E, now famous for killing people and causing billions in damages through negligence, and SoCal Edison, just as criminally shitty but smaller, basically went "well if that's how much electricity costs now I guess we just can't afford to give it to everyone da-hyuk da-hyuk da-hyuk." Meanwhile the further you get from California, the further you get from a grid that Enron has anything to do with. Power-swap agreements between California, Oregon and Washington led to my puny little mouse-that-roared local utility company going "you want how much?" and Enron going "whatever the fuck we want" and my local going "but all our shit is hydro" and Enron going "who run Bartertown" and my puny little local going "I think we're going to sue" which lead to the discovery motion that uncovered the audio recordings that basically fried Enron alive. My local reps and senators went up against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who under Bush attempted to quash the tapes because of course they did. So while the West Coast managed to kill the dragon in 2000, it mostly crawled back to its lair in Texas, where it was born, and focused on fucking over the locals. George W. Bush, while governor of Texas before becoming president, overhauled the Texas electricity market in 1999 with a bid to introduce greater competition in parts of the industry. But energy experts say that state regulators appointed by the Republican governors in power for decades in Texas have been loath to do anything that might raise electricity prices. “They wound up basically creating an old-style Soviet bureau,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economics lecturer at the University of Houston, referring to ERCOT. “This is a controlled flight into terrain.” Which, I'm guessing, was your point all along, no?The Republicans who rose to power in Texas in the 1990s had their own ideas about turbocharging the electricity industry. Around that time, Texas energy giants like Enron (before its spectacular collapse in a 2001 accounting scandal) were winning plaudits for aggressive moves into power markets around the United States and the world.
Nailed it. Follow the history and it leads you here...what I did not know was that Snohomish County is what sunk Enron. I need to watch that documentary.
SnoPUD found the plans to the Death Star. A journalist actually fired the photon torpedoes. But yeah, it's hella great. If only to watch the moves of Lou Pai, the only guy who got out of Enron clean. Best guess? Pai knew something was up because he was at the top. Unfortunately he could either, you know, not be evil and hope the rest of the corrupt-to-the-core nightmare followed along or pull the ripcord (guess which one he did?). Small problem? He couldn't sell any options outside of an "adverse life event". So he started dating a stripper to force a divorce which allowed him to liquidate his options and resign. He knocked up the stripper, married her, and bought 8000 acres in Colorado. Dude is living his best (chaotic evil) life.