his rationale went something like this: the wholesale electricity market (that is, the power that was sold back and forth among electric utilities) was huge—by Enron’s estimates, about $91 billion a year, triple the size of the market for natural gas. Assuming the company could create an electricity-trading business and claim 20 percent of it, the payoff would be enormous. As the first big entrant in the power-trading business, Enron would be able to create liquidity and exploit the big early profit margins that result from a young, inefficient market. Plus, the federal government was about to
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