Remember during the last deregulation cycle. When the Savings & Loan and Bank industries were "deregulated" one open question was: are there banks considered too big to fail. The problem with that doctrine is it warps management's risk analysis. Instead of appropriate investments, management makes excessively risky decisions in an attempt to achieve short-term returns and maximize shareholder value. Is PG&E too big to fail? On Thu, 18 January 2001, "Steven M. Bellovin" wrote:

If PG&E files for bankruptcy, control of the company passes to a federal judge. If you subscribe to the NY Times site, see http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/18/national/18ENER.html Here's the first paragraph:

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 17 - Politicians and power company executives have bickered for months about how best to solve California's energy problems, but ultimately it may come down to this: a bankruptcy court judge may be the only person with the authority to ask for the rate increases and cost cuts that a growing chorus of analysts say are necessary, but that nobody in the state has been able to agree upon.

--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb