You have to ask some glaringly obvious questions about Buffett's riding to the rescue of Constellation Energy.

It is always nice to buy for a quarter anything that a year ago cost a buck. But how did Constellation find itself on the ropes in recent weeks? More pointedly, how did a company headed by one of the few utility CEOs with a background in the financial services industry - Mayo Shattuck - stumble so dramatically as a result of crisis in the financial services industry?

Put differently, how can any energy utility 8 years after the utter collapse of energy trading giant Enron, and others like Aquila, Williams and the like - fall prey to the same disaster as visited its predecessors?

Put differently, how can an energy trading operation - which is, after all, all about providing tools to others to hedge their risks associated with energy price fluctuations - fail so miserably in hedging itsr own risks?

I just don't get it. Talking with an industry heavyweight Thursday at the GridWeek event in Washington, I heard one story that suggests  that Constellation's crisis was not spurred by its financial creditor but rather the crisis of faith one rating agency had in the Baltimore power giant. Surely someone with Mayo's skills should have seen it coming - and known how to keep the ratings boys on the reservation.

It just does not add up.

But smelling the air in Washington this week, I realized Alice in Wonderland the literary fiction is fast becoming our nation's politcal and economic reality.

Footnote. Dodging raindrops, I ran over to EEI's headquarters castle on Pennsylvania Avenue after the GridWeek conference broke up yesterday. The folks there that deal with the investor relations types at the IOU utilities feel that the power industry had about one year's worth of breathing time if the credit markets seize up before they must deal with lights out financial dark times.