{"id":178289,"date":"2019-01-15T20:22:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T01:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/01\/15\/they-are-not-shareholders-they-are-unindicted-co-conspirators\/"},"modified":"2019-01-15T20:22:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T01:22:00","slug":"they-are-not-shareholders-they-are-unindicted-co-conspirators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/01\/15\/they-are-not-shareholders-they-are-unindicted-co-conspirators\/","title":{"rendered":"They are Not Shareholders, They are Unindicted Co-Conspirators"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2019\/1\/14\/18182162\/pg-e-camp-fire-bankruptcy\">PG&amp;E is planning to declare bankruptcy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Many people are concerned about the fate of the shareholders, but they, or their fund managers\/hedge funds, knew that PG&amp;E had a cavalier attitude toward safety and infrastructure, ans so those investors deserve to lose their investments:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Utilities have long been considered ultrasafe bets. But PG&amp;E Corp.\u2019s<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\">announcement Monday that it will file for bankruptcy is teaching investors that isn\u2019t always true.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The Baupost Group LLC, Viking Global Investors LP and BlueMountain Capital Management LLC were among the hedge funds that snapped up shares of PG&amp;E Corp. during the third quarter of 2018, just before the deadliest wildfire in California history triggered an existential crisis for the state\u2019s largest utility.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">That crisis entered a new phase Monday when PG&amp;E said that it intends to seek chapter 11 bankruptcy protection by the end of the month due to more than $30 billion it faces related to its role in sparking deadly California wildfires in 2017 and 2018. That sent its shares down 52%. Shares have now fallen 83% since the fire began on Nov. 8 and bonds are down 25%. The price of PG&amp;E bonds due in 2034 fell about 8% Monday, according to MarketAxess.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You have to understand something here:  People were not investing in PG&amp;E <b>IN SPITE OF<\/b> their horrible safety record, they did so <b>BECAUSE<\/b> of their horrible safety record.<\/p>\n<p>They looked at fires, and pipeline explosions, and pollution, and thought, &#8220;These are people truly committed to extracting the last possible penny out of any situation, no matter who they hurt or kill.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The shareholders should be wiped out.<\/p>\n<p>The bondholders should be wiped out.<\/p>\n<p>The executives should be wiped out, and jailed in a SuperMax as a warning to others.<\/p>\n<p>And then, it&#8217;s capital should become state owned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like PG&amp;E is planning to declare bankruptcy. Many people are concerned about the fate of the shareholders, but they, or their fund managers\/hedge funds, knew that PG&amp;E had a cavalier attitude toward safety and infrastructure, ans so those investors deserve to lose their investments: Utilities have long been considered ultrasafe bets. But PG&amp;E &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,457,364,456],"class_list":["post-178289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-energy","tag-evil","tag-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}