>Those are interesting coincidences, Hilmar, and we may one day learn that the events were linked in some way.
>
>But this idea that neither economic model allows for the costly redundancy required is, to me, the "excuse du jour".

I am not sure whether the word "excuse" is appropriate, since it may very well be the real reason. I mean, governments and companies saving in the wrong place.

Polititians might place the blame on an economic model, but the fact is that the government has not done enough in the sense of supervision, assuring redundancy, etc.

>As regards that actual failure, I have no idea but I wouldn't discount terrorism, personally.

Neither I. In Bolivia, I haven't heard about the official investigation yet, but at some moment, the blackout was blamed on a fire. Assuming this is the case, I suspect it would be very difficult to ascertain whether the fire was intentional.

>But as regards the time to (full) repair, I think we can attribute a significant part of the time it took to ever-popular "downsizing". I don't doubt that a good many of the poeple who KNEW WHAT TO DO were no longer around, having been terminated or fired or early-retired in order to save the bucks their salaries once commanded. In other words, along with the departure of those people also went the "institutional memory" that is invaluable all the time but specifically in instances like just happened.

I think this type of downsizing, unfortunately, is causing problems in many different places, all over the World.