Tag: Texas

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Article: Texas blackouts may bring winterization mandates from FERC, shape federal spending priorities

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Texas blackouts may bring winterization mandates from FERC, shape federal spending priorities

Jasmin Melvin, 24 March 2021

New York — Policy activity on grid resilience has seen an uptick in the month since an Arctic blast left millions of Texans without power for days, and the federal policy response could bring new requirements for generator winterization and inform stimulus and infrastructure spending priorities, a Washington insider said March 24.

The federal response starts with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Jeff Dennis, managing director and general counsel for Advanced Energy Economy, said during an AEE-hosted webinar on the policy fallout from the Texas blackouts. Continue reading “Article: Texas blackouts may bring winterization mandates from FERC, shape federal spending priorities”

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Article: Melvin Capital Is Facing Nine Lawsuits Related to the GameStop Frenzy

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Melvin Capital Is Facing Nine Lawsuits Related to the GameStop Frenzy

Michelle Celarier, Institutional Investor, 22 March 2021

Gabriel Plotkin’s Melvin Capital, the hedge fund at the center of the GameStop trading frenzy in January, is a defendant in nine lawsuits by retail investors alleging a conspiracy to limit trading that caused them to lose money.

The hedge fund revealed the existence of the lawsuits in its annual ADV filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Melvin was famously short GameStop and lost more than 50 percent during January following a short squeeze orchestrated by a Reddit forum called WallStreetBets, whose members included retail investors in GameStop. As the stock soared, various online brokerages catering to those investors, including Robinhood, restricted buying shares of GameStop, among other stocks heavily shorted by Melvin.

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Article: The Big Texas Shootout: Where Did The Deep Freeze Money Go?

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The Big Texas Shootout: Where Did The Deep Freeze Money Go?

Llewellyn King, 15 March 2021

The shootout is a deeply revered piece of Texas mythology, even though the most famous shootout of all was in Arizona at the O.K. Corral. In fact, only half a dozen public disputes which were settled with the gun took place in Texas, but the myths endure and are cherished.

A shootout of another type has started in Texas — one which will last longer than any brief gunplay and will substitute legal briefs for bullets. This dispute is over the exorbitant charges for power generated during the mid-February deep freeze.

The first to draw was Brazos, the state’s oldest and largest electric power cooperative, which filed for bankruptcy. Some think it will be the first in a long column. Then Denton, the municipally owned utility, sued the Texas grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), contesting a $200-million electric charge during the winter storm.

On March 12, San Antonio’s CPS Energy, the largest municipally owned utility in Texas, drew a bead on ERCOT and fired off a number of heavy rounds in a complaint that pitted the otherwise progressive and low-key utility against ERCOT.

‘Illegal Wealth Transfers’
The complaint, filed in the District Court of Bexar County, seeks immediate and permanent injunctive relief. It states: “CPS Energy sues ERCOT its officers and directors, who are presiding over one of the largest illegal wealth transfers in the history of Texas.”

The lawsuit states that CPS Energy plans to conduct discovery under the Texas civil code and its purpose is to protect its customers from “excessive and illegitimate power and natural gas costs.”

CPS Energy President and CEO Paula Gold-Williams said at a press conference, “We are fighting to protect our customers from the financial impacts of the systemic failure of the ERCOT market, and the outrageous and unlawful costs associated with that failure.”

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Article: Form S-1/A Glass Houses Acquisition Corp.

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Form S-1/A Glass Houses Acquisition Corp.

EDGAR AGENTS LLC, 08 March 2021

Glass Houses Acquisition Corp. is a newly organized blank check company formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses, which we refer to throughout this prospectus as our initial business combination. We have not selected any specific business combination target, and we have not, nor has anyone on our behalf, initiated any substantive discussions, directly or indirectly, with any business combination target with respect to an initial business combination with us. While we will not be limited to a particular industry or geographic region in our identification and acquisition of a target company, we intend to focus our search for a target business that provides critical resources and/or services to the technologies powering the 21st century industrial economy.

This is an initial public offering of our securities. Each unit has an offering price of $10.00 and consists of one share of our Class A common stock and one-half of one warrant. Each whole warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one share of our Class A common stock at a price of $11.50 per share, subject to adjustment as described in this prospectus, and only whole warrants are exercisable. The warrants will become exercisable 30 days after the completion of our initial business combination, and will expire five years after the completion of our initial business combination or earlier upon redemption or liquidation, as described in this prospectus. No fractional warrants will be issued upon separation of the units and only whole warrants will trade. We have also granted the underwriter a 45-day option to purchase up to an additional 3,000,000 units to cover over-allotments, if any

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Article: John McAfee Indicted On Fraud, Money Laundering Charges In Pump-And-Dump Crypto Scheme

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John McAfee Indicted On Fraud, Money Laundering Charges In Pump-And-Dump Crypto Scheme

Rachel Sandler, 05 March 2021

John McAfee was indicted on securities fraud and money laundering charges, the Justice Department announced Friday, adding to the antivirus software pioneer’s litany of legal problems stemming from more than a decade of sometimes bizarre behavior.

McAfee and an advisor of his cryptocurrency team, Jimmy Watson Jr., were indicted on several counts of conspiracy to commit commodities and securities fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy offenses.

Prosecutors say McAfee and his cryptocurrency team used his Twitter account, which has a million followers, to promote Initial Coin Offerings without disclosing he was being paid by the ICO issuers to do so. Continue reading “Article: John McAfee Indicted On Fraud, Money Laundering Charges In Pump-And-Dump Crypto Scheme”

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Article: Texas Grid Failure: Why More Heads Need To Roll

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Texas Grid Failure: Why More Heads Need To Roll

Ed Hirs, 02 March 2021

The Texas electricity market failed. Yet in the words of ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, it functioned just as designed. ERCOT has congratulated itself for losing only 40% of the grid and is proceeding to settle transactions to transfer more than $50 billion from consumers to electricity generators. Why is there such an obvious disconnect?

The core premise of effective governance is that the officers and directors of any entity understand the business they govern. The late Yale University economist Paul W. MacAvoy used to state it this way: The purpose of the board of directors is to assist the CEO to develop the corporation’s strategy and then monitor performance. If performance is not up to expectations, the board must ask two questions. Continue reading “Article: Texas Grid Failure: Why More Heads Need To Roll”

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Article: Texas power consumers to pay the price of winter storm

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Texas power consumers to pay the price of winter storm

Scott DiSavino, Stephanie Kelly, 18 February 2021

(Reuters) – Texas residents suffering a winter storm that has left millions without power are set to face a future challenge in higher utility bills, after the days-long cold snap put an unprecedented strain on the state’s power network.

Some 2.7 million households in Texas, the largest electricity consuming state in the United States, were without heat on Wednesday as freezing temperatures in a normally temperate part of the country overwhelmed demand, causing blackouts and widespread anger.

Wholesale power prices soared more than 300-fold, stirring memories of the price spikes that accompanied California’s energy crisis of 2000-2001, when Enron and others artificially increased prices. Continue reading “Article: Texas power consumers to pay the price of winter storm”

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Article: The Manipulative, Little Known Billionaire Who Nearly Ruined The Country’s Richest Black Person

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The Manipulative, Little Known Billionaire Who Nearly Ruined The Country’s Richest Black Person

Christopher Helman, 05 February 2021

Ever since Ford Motor Company began selling its Model T in 1908, few pieces of technology have been as important to car dealer profit margins as the DocuPad.

The 45-by-29-inch flat screen sits atop a salesman’s desk, giving him the ability to quickly coax customers through what would normally be mountains of paperwork. By enabling car buyers to check boxes with a stylus and sign contracts on the interactive screen, the DocuPad takes the friction out of a car salesman’s stock in trade—the upsell. Continue reading “Article: The Manipulative, Little Known Billionaire Who Nearly Ruined The Country’s Richest Black Person”

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Article: What’s The Endgame For GameStop?

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What’s The Endgame For GameStop?

Taylor Tepper,  27 January 2021

There’s something very weird happening in shares of GameStop (GME).

A market frenzy has pushed the shares of the Grapevine, Texas-based video game retailer up more than 3,000% in just a few months—far, far outsripping the market as a whole. A once-dormant brick-and-mortar retailer with sagging sales, GameStop was worth $300 million in August 2019. Today it has a market cap of almost $20 billion.

Nobody knows what it’ll be worth tomorrow.

GameStop has not invented an addictive new gaming platform. GameStop has not rolled out an awe-inspiring online gaming delivery service. GameStop is a store at the mall. That doesn’t bode well for revenue, given that state governments have imposed rolling lockdowns and stay-at-home orders to limit the spread of Covid-19. And yet here we are. Continue reading “Article: What’s The Endgame For GameStop?”

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Article: Texas AG Probing Tech Giants Over Parler Ban

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Texas AG Probing Tech Giants Over Parler Ban

Jack Queen, 11 January 2021

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Wednesday demanded tech giants including Google, Amazon and Apple hand over details about their content moderation policies after conservative social media site Parler was effectively booted from the web following last week’s deadly Capitol riot.

Paxton, a Republican who is leading a separate antitrust blitz against tech titans, also demanded information from Facebook and Twitter, saying the “seemingly coordinated deplatforming” of President Donald Trump and others raises First Amendment and competition concerns. Continue reading “Article: Texas AG Probing Tech Giants Over Parler Ban”

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