Michael Giberson For a long time in the United States, ethanol has been a fringe act, a political plaything, a way for Congress to subsidize the income of well-connected agribusinesses without thinking too hard. Now, ethanol has become a member of a small cluster of “ideas” that are supposed to help us get on down …
Michael Giberson The Fort Worth, Texas Star-Telegram reports that private capital groups Blackstone Capital Partners LP and the Carlyle Group are considering their own bid to take TXU private. While it may seem a little late in the day for a new bid – after all the TXU board has already approved the offer from …
Rival Bid for Txu? And What About the Politicians? Read More »
Michael Giberson There were several bits of competition-related news items in Friday’s Washington Post. Catching my interest were Steven Pearlstein’s column advocating against the XM-Sirius merger (See also Howard Kurtz article from Wednesday and Rob Pegoraro’s tech column on Thursday) and a story on the passage of a bill by the Virginia state legislature that …
Michael Giberson XM and Sirius, two satellite radio networks, announced plans to merge yesterday. Amusingly, in the New York Times the story begins with “The nation’s two satellite radio services, Sirius and XM, announced …”, while in the Washington Post leads with ”XM and Sirius, the two satellite radio companies ….” In each case the …
Satellite Radio Merger: Antitrust Law in All Its Splendor to Be Revealed Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Up early for a Saturday, for a 6:45 AM Liverpool/Chelsea game (which the good guys won 2-0, even though fave KP hottie Xabi Alonso took a knee to the mouth and had to have stitches) … so inevitably I am trolling for geeky network regulation fodder now that the game’s over. And I …
Lynne Kiesling The big story in Chicago for the past few days has been the FBI storming of Alderman Arenda Troutman’s office to arrest her on bribery charges. Chicago politics always has some aspect of theater to it, and this instance is no exception. But what is exceptional is her frank honesty: Troutman, 49, was …
Lynne Kiesling James Surowiecki had a nice little column about sugar and ethanol tariffs in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago. As is his wont, he concisely summarizes the pros and cons of ethanol, focusing on the higher net energy balance that cane sugar ethanol has relative to corn ethanol. He also applies …
Michael Giberson Falling gasoline prices in the few months before the recent U.S. election led some observers to conclude that the oil industry (or possibly the Bush administration) was cutting prices in an effort to manipulate election results. I’m skeptical, but now a pair of economists have done some related analysis and found some support …
Gasoline Price Manipulation for Political Gains? Read More »
Michael Giberson It is a delicate situation, trying to serve the power needs of some of the nation’s most powerful and well-connected people, but that’s the job that Dominion Power has in serving load in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, and surrounding areas. Population is growing in Northern Virginia, as is the size …
Powerful Opportunity for Demand Response in Northern Virginia Read More »
Michael Giberson Warren Meyer at Coyote Blog cites news from Colorado of a successful $1.4 million lawsuit against a grocery retailer that granted discounts on gasoline to consumers that spent over $100 on groceries. The suit was founded upon the state’s “Unfair Practices Act” and filed by, you guessed it, competitors of the discounting retailers.
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