Price Manipulation in the Australian Electricity Market

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article about manipulation of prices within the electricity industry. The exact details are rather hard to understand, but from what I can determine, data was manipulated to justify the maximum possible price rises to regulators. In essence, if I am getting this correct, the companies are gaming the independent regulators.

This is of course something that should not be happening, but was something that has basically been predicted by 2014 Nobel Prize winning economist Jean Tirole, who noted that markets often know more about what is going on than regulators. What was most interesting is that he was awarded the Nobel Prize within 48 hours of this article being released. Coincidence? I think not.