Atlas Shrugged (Part I) had a strong debut weekend despite the effort of its philosophical critics, including some leading movie reviewers, to pan the effort and to discourage attendance (see the Appendix below where Walter Donway challenges Roger Ebert).

This movie and the classic 1957 book are important for today’s energy debate in a variety of ways, beginning with Enron and continuing with Obama energy policy. And how Rand undressed Richard Nixon with the energy crisis of her day(Part V–see schedule below)!

“Ah, Ha!”: Interpreting Enron/Ken Lay

For me personally, Ayn Rand’s philosophy was the key that unlocked the mystery of Ken Lay and the magical new energy company, Enron. I had once studied Objectivism but lost interest in Ayn Rand, finding it too dogmatic for my taste. (In retrospect, I ‘threw the baby out with the bath water’.)…

“Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.”

– Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933)

“[The 1930s Great Depression and today’s Great Recession] were preceded by extraordinary expansions of bank credit, which fueled run-up’s in stock prices and real estate values…. The two economic crises also elicited similar (and equally counterproductive ) fiscal policy responses, combining substantial increases in federal spending, financed primarily by bollorwing, with higher taxes and more regulatory controls on the private sector.”

[This interview of Robert L. Bradley Jr. by Stephen Hicks (website here) is part of a series: Part I (Libertarianism and Energy); Part II (Expanding Energy Horizons); and Part III (Enron as a Political Company).]

Kaizen: You mentioned that Enron was also involved in lots of alternative energy sources—wind power, solar power, “green” energy, and that it was one of the first at the political table. Did Enron think that with the right kind of farsighted investment the new energies could be profitable?

Or was this again part of a political strategy: Alternative energy was a political favorite, certainly during the Clinton Administration years, when Al Gore was vice president? So Enron is getting a seat at the table; and whether alternative energy actually succeeds or not, it’s a good business strategy at least in the short term.…

[Part III of an interview of Robert L. Bradley Jr. by Stephen Hicks (website here). Part I (Libertarianism and Energy) and Part II (Expanding Energy Horizons) have been published.] 

“Ken Lay lives in Jim Rogers! The master of the regulation game for natural gas transmission brought Lay’s get-out-in-front political strategy from Enron to a company called Public Service Company of Indiana, which became Cinergy, which was bought by Duke Energy. Rogers positioned his coal-laden company as very concerned about climate change and wanting cap-and-trade regulation.”

Kaizen: Enron operated in a highly mixed political and economic environment. In the decades that Enron was operating—the 1980s through the early 2000s—to what extent was the U.S. energy market a free market, and to what extent was it regulated economy?

Bradley: The energy industries—oil, natural gas, and electricity—have all been politicized.…