We were all wrong about domestic energy independence until the big shale finds/feasibility work in Texas and the Dakotas in the 2000s. Syriana [1] is a pretty

We were all wrong about domestic energy independence until the big shale finds/feasibility work in Texas and the Dakotas in the 2000s. Syriana [1] is a pretty good example of the popular zeitgeist as late as its release in 2005. And its portrait of how lobbyism works, how nullified anti-trust was becoming in late Greenspan era, how un-winnable Middle East adventurism was going to play out are all still watching today [2] if you swap the worst of finance and the worst of tech in (neither of energy, tech, or finance are all bad even at the level of individual companies: a few bad apples as usual spoil the bunch in a fractal way). We’re stuck with policies and capture from the pre-shale era because capture is a wratchet (which should be delivered over a Littlefinger monologue and a montage megacap CEOs chuckling over wrist slap fines at the Battery and SoHo House). Carter was a bad leader, though I’ve heard from regular people alive then that it was his wimp out on the Iran hostage crisis and the fiasco with the chopper rescue (Eagle Claw maybe? Desert Claw?) that sealed the deal on the Reagan era and the disastrous consequences of that we still live with today. cough Summers cough what was I saying? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriana https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriana [2] https://youtu.be/apM0d3M-sps?si=Ip7P2FD9s15B47HD https://youtu.be/apM0d3M-sps?si=Ip7P2FD9s15B47HD