Governor Gavin Newsom asked Warren Buffet to use Berkshire-Hathaway to buy PG&E. Berkshire-Hathaway has been acquiring utilities throughout the West including PacifiCorp and Nevada Power. However, other than deep pockets, it’s not clear what Buffet has to offer in this situation.

PG&E’s stock fell as low as $3.80 per share on Tuesday, closing at $5.03. The total market value, including the natural gas utility, is now $2.66 billion. The invested book value on the other hand is about $26 billion.

Not sure why California doesn’t just buy the company for, say, $5B instead of appealing to an out of state private owner. Several state legislators, including a key state senator, Bill Dodd, have expressed support for some sort of state acquisition. Then the state can either parse it out to public utilities, set up a cooperative or bid out the franchises to multiple operators or owners. Ratepayers/taxpayers will have to pay most of the wildfire liabilities anyway, so why not remove the high-cost (and apparently incompetent) middleman?