Free Republic

JIM PUPLAVA: Joining me on the program is Matthew Simmons. He’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Simmons & Company International, a Houston-based investment bank that specializes in the energy industry. Mr. Simmons serves on the boards of Brown-Forman Corporation, The Atlantic Council of The United States, he’s also a member of the National Petroleum Council and The Council of Foreign Relations. He has an MBA from Harvard University. And he’s here to discuss his new book Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. Matt, I want to start out the discussion from the...

Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, premieres on PBS April 3, 10, and 17, 2002 at 9:00 PM ( check local listings ). Based on the book by Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, this six-hour limited series traces the evolution of the modern global economy through the nine tumultuous decades since World War I. And a Ben Wattenberg interview transcript. An exerpt: BEN WATTENBERG: Hello, I’m Ben Wattenberg. When Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin coined the phrase ’the commanding heights’ he was referring to the locus of national economic power. That is, the major enterprises...