Energy guru and Pulitzer-prize winning author Daniel Yergin toldFederal Energy Regulatory Commission staffers there will still be aplace for the agency in the next millennium despite the fact themarketplace is taking “The Commanding Heights” away fromgovernments.

“The role of government in the future will shift fromdetermining what the price should be, to making sure the marketworks,” he said. Unlike economist Alfred Kahn, who told the sameaudience two weeks ago that regulators should be prepared to phasethemselves out of jobs, Yergin believes that government will stillplay a vital role, if only to administer anti-trust laws to keepthe market vibrant in an era when the number of players continuesto shrink.

The world has shifted to a view that favors deregulation,privatization and the blessings of the free market. Whether thatworld view will continue to hold into the next century depends on anumber of variables that Yergin lays out in the new book heco-authored with Joseph Stanislaw, “The Commanding Heights: – thebattle between government and the marketplace that is remaking themodern world.”

Paramount is whether free markets “deliver the goods,” saysYergin, which can be measured by a “society score card” thatincludes looking at Gross Domestic Product (GDP), inflation,economic growth and creation of jobs. Other variables are not soeasily quantifiable. These include the role of national identity inan increasingly global market, environmental experiments (the Kyotoaccord being one example), demographic changes and advances inbiotechnology.

“Right now we’re seeing more confidence in the market,” saidYergin, which may be influenced by a disillusionment in much of theworld with state-owned companies. Whether the market, in future,becomes transformed in the general mind as a series of predatoryanimals or simply a group of people getting the job done may dependin large part on what happens with the “hot money” handled by assetmanagers. The new threat, said Yergin, won’t come from capitalistrobber barons, but from pension fund managers, who will be theparties calling the shots.

The book, “a colorful and even suspenseful story of how theworld has been transformed over the last half-century,” weavestogether “milestone events in countries as diverse as France andIndia, the biography of leaders as different as Margaret Thatcherand Deng Xiaoping and the evolution of ideas ranging from Keynesianeconomics … to the Chicago school of free markets,” according toa New York Times review. Yergin’s lean and flowing, easily readablewriting style makes light work for the reader of the trip from WWIIinto the next millennium.

Sarah McKinley

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