This sentiment of too much investment too fast is echoed by energy analyst Paul Gipe, who points out that the “tax credits were so lucrative that they attracted those who knew more about constructing a deal than about building wind turbines.” Unwittingly Ronald Reagan had created one of the weirdest marriages American business has ever seen, as Manhattan investment bankers scrambled to buy up wind turbines made by commune-living, Vietnam-era draft dodgers. The result was that California, by the mid-1980s, had a massive wind bubble, ripe for popping.
