Chris Sununu: “I think that is a very prescient point, because we can look back in time from three particular areas where we either as…”

“I think that is a very prescient point, because we can look back in time from three particular areas where we either as a Nation did try to second guess the markets or we nearly tried to second guess the markets and look at what the historical results were. First case in point, synthetic fuels. We put billions of dollars into trying to develop oil from coal in the synthetic fuels program, trying to second guess the technology that is out there in the energy marketplace; and that money was essentially wasted because the technological feasibility of success in that area was so limited. A second example, back in the 1980s, the silicon industry, the chip industry was crying for subsidies for static memory. We need Federal subsidies to maintain our static memory markets. It was a question of competitiveness. We heard it from all corners of the country. Today, the static memory business is a terrible business to be in. The margins are razor thin. We put about $400 million into subsidy for that industry. But in retrospect, it would have been a terrible industry to subsidize. A third example, high definition television. Thank goodness we did not put tens of billions of dollars into subsidizing that technology as some of our European and Asian counterparts did, because, by allowing markets to determine where the technology went, the American companies have the winning standard. So we have to be careful about distorting these technical markets.”