Lynne Kiesling
Ed Reid tried to post the following comment on my post below regarding the GAO’s report on energy demand in the 21st century:
I am concerned about the implications of “providing clear and consistent signals to energy markets”, as opposed to allowing free communication of clear signals among market participants. The US energy market does not need the government “providing signals”; that has been going on at the state and federal levels forever, with easily documented but generally adverse results. Enough!
Yes. Let me be clear about my meaning from that post. Government organizations cannot provide price signals because they are not, and should not be, market participants. If we think that there is some need for transparency from institutions that is not emanating from the existing market institutions, then the proper role of a regulatory organization is to clear away the institutional rubble and underbrush that prevents the communication of clear and transparent price signals among market participants.
My argument in the preceding post was simply to say that at various levels and in various parts of the energy industries, individuals in government organizations have chosen to muck up the transmission of that information. They have done so for both putatively noble objectives and pure rent-seeking and political objectives, but muck it up they have. Thus I think that they should take as a primary objective clearing up all of that muck and underbrush that they have inflicted upon increasingly interconnected and dynamic markets.