Black & Kvetch… er… Black & Veatch…
March 9th, 2008
… or is it Bitch & Kvetch… Google Analytics, it’s a wonderful thing, it leads me places I have no clue existed and asking questions that leaves me wondering just exactly how many people are spending way too much time on their computer. The tracking shows searches, what someone was digging around about before they landed on my site, and some are inexplicable, like the regular searches for Andrew Borene, who cares, or the constant searches for “shit” or Krispy Kreme.” Others are more understandable, like “coal gasification” and “Outland transmission line” and “Big Stone combustion waste – where does it go?” and “certificate of need corrupt.” Then there’s the ones by people I figure I must know and if I don’t, I should, like “Ken Lay is not dead” and “rip their eyes out Greg Davids” (remember him???!!! eeeeuw), or “Lenka Dusilova + credits” or bust a gut ones like “what are the positive aspects of coal?” and… and … and others send me right to google, where I figure something’s up that I should know about, like “technological leprosy” and “warrick project flour india” and “use of sludge as pozzalan in concrete,” and today’s favorite: “can’t sell my Black & Veatch stock.”
Turns out that Black & Veatch, if you believe what you read on the internet, has an employee stock ownership plan. Which then got me thinking about whether, with all these plants going down, if the conslutants take it in the shorts if a project doesn’t go forward for one reason or another. Many of the folks working on Mesaba are doing it on spec. What about the biggies, do they get paid, get paid a percentage, how does it work? With so many coal plants going down, and if they had to take a hit on each, maybe that’s connected with the query? If that’s you out there, let me know what’s up!!!
Anyway, when I was googling around, I found this week’s “Energy Strategies Report,” which is looking at financial picture of the electric industry. Watching all these plants go down, watching stocks downgraded, watching the industry, and the coal sector in particular, coal plants specifically, watching these downgraded as investments, oh, it makes my day. So here’s another of the gloom and doom reports, and it’s very well written, meaning that it’s easy to read and understand, and it’s taking from my favorite sources, like NERC, lots of good little gems to be found:
Here’s the report that made my week, already, in just a quick scan:
My favorite quote? Ya gotta love it:
To put it less charitably than Moody’s, the invester-owned sector now teeters on the cusp of non-investment grade (junk) status.
Hee hee hee hee hee hee, it’s pretty hard to hide the economics of these hare-brained schemes. And they’re getting smacked upside the head with it. ‘Bout time… more comments later after I’ve had a chance to really read it.
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