Former pretender to the Presidency, George Allen has “penned” an “OpEd” that is embarrassingly mistaken. Either he claimed authorship for a piece he didn’t write or he has written history that isn’t right. In either case, he proves once again that he lives in a world where facts are unimportant.
“A free society with abundant energy enhances and improves the health and quality of lives. That is the power of unleashed freedom, enabling prosperity through electricity, energy and education. As the satellite image shows; it is the difference been darkness and light.” – George Allen (or his ghostwriter here)
That is his conclusion. It serves a number of masters and is intellectual pap for the believers. Apparently whoever wrote this wore a cloudy American lens; or is just lying. Don’t get me wrong, the South Korean transformation is awe inspiring. When I returned there in 2003, I could not at first comprehend that this was the country where I’d spent ten freezing winter weeks in 1978 living in the field near the Demilitarized Zone; even more so during the ride from Inchon International Airport past Gimpo to the Seoul city center. True, none of this could happen under the tyranny of North Korean leadership.
But the fact is that South Korea’s current vibrant economy is more the outcome of a 1998 bailout and stimulus package from the International Monetary Fund and the implementation of appropriate government banking regulation at the behest of Japan and the United States. All that following a crisis precipitated from, you might not be surprised, unsupervised privatization of the banking industry and unregulated and unfettered speculative lending; not to mention a monetary policy that ignored the realities of the market.
Poor George should stick to NASCAR picks and leave economics and history to people who have read books. And, quit being such a witless tool of the energy sector.
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