Will Warren Buffett Be The New Samuel Insull?

摘要

When George W. Bush signed the new energy bill in an Albuquerque ceremony on Aug. 8, Omaha-based mega-billionaire Warren Buffett could take the most direct credit for the legislation's worst mistake: repeal of the 1935 Public Utilities Holding Company Act (PUHCA). Buffett, advisor and political controller of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a mover of the disastrous California "electricity deregulation" fiasco of 2000-2001, had repeatedly told Congressional committees since then, that he had $10 billion he would invest in electric utility infrastructure as soon as Congress repealed PUHCA. The so-called super-investor and "sage of Omaha" personally lobbied all the Western states' governors on that idea, and his flunky George Sokol, CEO of the MidAmerican Energy Holdings subsidiary of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Corp., lobbied former Congressman Billy Tauzin of Louisiana to first put PUHCA repeal in the House version of what's now the new energy act.