How do American electric utilities differ from water companies, telephone companies, airlines, insurance firms, food processors, newspapers, steel mills, and other industries in the United States? "They produce electricity and the others don't," you answer. Maybe, but the others can produce electricity, too, if they want to. The correct answer is: Thanks to a law passed 60 years ago to protect a different industry from the depredations of now long-dead financial manipulators, no business may buy 10 percent or more of an electric utility's shares without submitting its entire operation to the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and risking a demand to divest itself of all nonutility operations. Let's think about that for a minute.