Grovernomics

Is apparently quite sophisticated:

I think the biggest thing holding back economic growth now is the concern that next week you wake up and the EPA or some other department of government has decided not just what kind of light bulbs you have, but how big your car can be.

Via an appalled Benen, who cannot believe Republicans take this man seriously. Erica Grieder defends fuel efficiency regulations:

Mandatory energy-efficiency standards are a bit of a conundrum for a liberal outfit like The Economist. On the one hand, they clearly are an intrusion into the workings of the free market. On the other, they work. No one beyond the libertarian fringe seems to mind very much, they save us money that we would otherwise be too lazy or short-sighted to save for ourselves, and they’re normally designed in such a way that manufacturers manage to meet them without too much grief. Indeed, you can make the case that the failure to tighten fuel-economy standards during the 1990s and 2000s contributed to the collapse of the American car industry. A more visible hand was needed, it seems, and the European and Japanese carmakers labouring under one coped better than the likes of GM and Chrysler.

What I cannot understand is the ideological rigidity of those who have lived through the past few years and still think that self-regulation of markets is the answer to everything. Even Alan Greenspan has dropped that premise. But it still animates the GOP.