The drill baby drill types and the regulation is the enemy crowd

The importance of smart regulatory policy is obvious to anyone who turns on the news these days.

 

Ivory Tower types like to talk about "free markets" and "getting government off the backs of business" as if letting the private sector run wild makes good economic sense.  Not to mention there is no empirical "free market" we can look back to in the days of yore that was sustaining.  Something we could point, no "free market" types like to ignore lots of the protectionism that help corporations or wealthy citizens--"free market"  have a nice theory that works great in the abstract but has nothing to do with the real world.

 

Problem is we want functioning markets, not "free markets" as this isn't a question of abstract ideology.  This is something that has a direct impact on the everyday lives of working people. When the private sector poorly prices cost--cutting corners in safety or pushing cost out in the form of externalities such as pollution--you get a dysfunctional marketplace. 

 

Poorly functioning markets create waste, inefficiencies, and sometime massive devastation (just ask people on the gulf coast what they think about it).

 

The oil spill is a great example of this in action. [via Calculated Risk..] Christine Blank at HotelNewsNow.com: Oil-spill update: Hotels report mixed results

Tourism officials and hotel operators in Gulf of Mexico coastal regions say they are struggling with occupancy and reservations, but some areas are suffering more than others.

...

“We have had some cancellations. It is hitting the beachfront properties hard and the casinos have seen some impact ... and the charter boat companies,” said Richard Forester, executive director of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau in Biloxi.

...

“Our members are experiencing unprecedented cancellations heading into their peak season, and this advertising campaign is critical to our economic survival,” said Carol Dover, president and CEO of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association in Tallahassee ... Many hoteliers in Northwest Florida that are typically at 90 percent occupancy rates heading into the Memorial Day weekend, were reporting a drop in bookings by 30 percent, according to the FRLA.

...

Texas’s coastal hotels also are feeling an impact, but that could be due to the overall U.S. economy more than to the oil spill.

“We have yet to have any cancellations [because of the oil spill],” said Theresa Elliott, GM of Casa del Mar Beachfront Suites, Galveston, Texas. ... Galveston-area hotels are significantly discounting rooms to boost stays, such as 20-percent off Sunday through Thursday stays, according to Elliott.

William Spain at MarketWatch has more: Spill could mean dark times for Sunshine State

At stake [in Florida] alone are hundreds of thousands of jobs and perhaps billions of dollars in revenue, depending on when and where the oil from BP PLC's runaway well makes landfall.

 

Although the beaches were still in the clear as of Thursday afternoon, widespread reports of vacation cancellations are already coming in ...

 

"It is already ugly," said John Fareed, a partner at Fareed Zapala Koepke, an Orlando-based hospitality-industry consultancy. "When it hits, it will be real and will position itself in the psyche of consumers who are getting ready to make vacation plans. It is going to have a huge impact in terms of future bookings and cancellations.  

"Every indication from the people we work with is that bookings have slowed to a trickle".

 

As Bill of Calculated Risk notes, "the loss of tourism pales in comparison to the ecological damage from the oil gusher."

 

Hopefully we will learn from the recklessness of the drill baby drill types, not to mention the "regulation is the enemy" crowd.

Posted via email from Jim Nichols