The company is also restricted on the type and amount of asset sales it can conduct. Again, the company is handcuffed in meeting the market's demands and employing its assets efficiently. Whether USEC will get its relief money is an open question. There are both supporters and detractors in Congress and the administration. The USEC story captures in microcosm many of the things that are wrong with government efforts to run businesses.
Intervention leads to more intervention and waste.
It cannot successfully do both. At the time of the original publication, Christopher Mayer, a commercial loan officer, was studying for his MBA at the University of Maryland. Reprinted with permission from The Freeman, a publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., May 2000, Vol. 50, No. 5.