China's Investors Move in on US Utilities

Remember the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935? I don’t either. It barred utility holding companies from using profits from their regulated business activities in unregulated businesses. It was a move after the Depression when 53 utility holding companies went bankrupt and 23 had bank loan defaults. Senate just repealed the law and China bought Unocal. Hilarity ensues:

If, short of war, the Chinese simply want to stall our national economy a little, couldn’t they take a lesson from the California electricity crisis in 2000-2001, from which California, the fifth largest economy in the world, is still struggling to recover, by withholding their generation from the "market?"


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2 responses to “China's Investors Move in on US Utilities”

  1. Gigamatt Avatar

    BRILLIANT! That is bloody brilliant. And possible. Wish I’d thought of that when I was doing my economic predictions a couple months ago.

  2. David Avatar

    You may not be aware, but the 1935 Act (PUHCA) is on the chopping block in the administration’s “energy bill.” Our PUHCA people here at the SEC have already begun clearing out their desks.

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