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In Joe Stiglitz's _The_Roaring_Nieneties_, Stiglitz describes the problems caused by deregulation and starts with a discussion of telecoms deregulation..
He describes his participation in a task force which was supposed to discuss telecoms deregulation and advise Clinton. The short story is that Clinton was trying to balance competing interests. He used the threat of veto when the Republicans tried to go to far, and they ended up with a bill the thought would be good, and they were taken by surprise by a few developments they didn't predict (one of which was the degree to which the big telecom companies fought to further their intersests, especially in the courts after the bill became law).
He says that the task force was headed by Gore. Other members were Reed Hundt, Bowman Cutter, Ann Bingaman, and Gregg Simon. He says that the task force divided into two camps: ardent deregulators and those who thought regulation was important.
Other than himself, he only identifies Ann Bingaman's views. He and Ann were for regulation. He summarizes the arguments the deregulators made to support their position without saying who exaclty put them forward. The arguments sounded illogical, contradictory and downright right-wing. There's no way, I feel, that the people making those arguments could have believed what they were saying.
Now, I remember Reed Hundt talking about regulation once when he was the FCC chairman. He was talking about instant messaging. It sounded so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but I thought that he must have known something that I didn't about potential uses for the technoloyg.
After reading Stiglitz, now I think that he and Gore must have been on the side of deregulation. In retrospect, I bet he knew that IM wasn't that important and that it was just him trying to sound like a Democrat when he was really for lax regulation of telecoms.
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