Industrial Policy

The following is in response to John Hofmeister's opinion piece in the February 8 2010 Wall Street Journal.

John Hofmeister’s call for an Industrial Policy is not a ringing endorsement of his upcoming book. He offers few examples of any of his claims, and he seems to ignore recent history. In 2004 Congress passed the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. Its purpose was to encourage manufacturing jobs during a period when our unemployment rate was below 6%. See how well it worked?
We had a government policy that encouraged home ownership. That policy blew up in our faces and took our economy down with it. So, now we should have a government policy that encourages manufacturing?
Mr. Hofmeister must be smarter than I am, because he actually ran a big oil company, but I still don’t trust him to figure out what jobs should be saved and which ones we should let go. And I don’t trust the 535 people in Congress to do it either.