Why Do New Yorkers Pay Sky High Electric Rates?  Thursday, March
19, 2009  HOST: New Yorkers pay some of the highest electric
rates in the nation – 45 percent higher than the national
average. Critics say there's something funny with the way
electricity is bought and sold.  MCCULLOUGH: If you walked into
the local grocery store and you found that a loaf of bread was
$1000, you’d have a pretty good sense that something was wrong
with that grocery store.  HOST: That's energy analyst Robert
McCullough. He's spotted what he says is the equivalent of a
$1000 loaf of bread in a study of New York's electric market.
His findings are provoking fierce debate over who -- or what --
is to blame for New York’s high electricity costs. We get more
from WNYC’s Ilya Marritz.  REPORTER: When Robert McCullough
started looking through the data on New York’s electricity
auctions, he noticed something weird.  MCCULLOUGH: There are
bids filed every day for $1000 per megawatt hour. Given today’s
prices, that’s fully 20 times the hig