The Quiet Takeover of U.S. Utilities

Over the past 100 years of US utility regulation, we’ve witnessed a great inversion of power: a once muscular administrative state has been severely weakened. In boxing terms, the utilities have won this round decisively vs big government. The financial implications are that state utility commissions and risk taking equity investors have become unnecessary. Why? Because if regulators uncritically approve every major utility capital initiative while authorizing generous returns on capital, then those jurisdictions already operate in a regime...