Don’t Mess With Markets

Occasionally, you actually do get some unique insights from academia, unique to academia anyway. “The political left tends to look on this as a problem with unfettered markets,” Tufts University adjunct economist Bruce Everett said last week at a symposium on “potential implications of oil disruption in Saudi Arabia.

By way of contrast, “Republicans will be hiding under their desks,” Everett noted at the Heritage conference on May 8, 2012. Everett remembers the last energy crisis. “When I was at the Fletcher School, we spent half our time studying and half our time waiting for gas,” he recalled. Ironically, Everett worked in the U. S. Department of Energy when it was a relatively new agency.

Nonetheless, Everett’s long view and detachment from his old employer have led him to a sobering realization. “The tendency in Washington towards central planning is worse than it was 30 years ago,” he asserts. Everett is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown.

“Let the market manage supply and demand,” he urged the receptive crowd at Heritage, advice we usually don’t get from the Ivory Tower, even from adjunct professors.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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