Townhalll | by Larry Kudlow | Jan. 16, 2010
President Obama’s misbegotten bank tax is precisely the wrong policy at precisely the wrong time. It will wind up backfiring across the board. Why? Because bank consumers and borrowers are the ones who will wind up paying this tax, creating an obstacle to economic recovery.
Obama is actually rewarding losers and punishing winners — exactly the reverse of free-market capitalism. [Read more…]
American Thinker | by Monty Pelerin | Nov. 23, 2009
The economic programs and policies currently in place are truly astounding. I don’t think I have ever seen a more harmful economic environment for the country. While some of these programs started with Bush, the Obama administration has advanced them to insane levels. Logic, economics, common sense, and history must be defied to believe a recovery is possible in this environment. The nation’s standard of living will be substantially lowered without prompt changes in policy. [Read more…]
Acton Institute | by Stephen Grabill | Nov. 4, 2009
Does the market inspire people to greater practical virtue, or does it eviscerate what little virtue any of us have?
Far from draining moral goodness out of us—as many think—the free market serves as a “school of the practical virtues.” Rather than elevating greed and self-sufficiency, the market fosters interdependence and cooperation. Its rewards do not go to those who are the most isolated, self-absorbed, or cut off from society, but to those who sustain mutually prosperous relationships with others. [Read more…]
American Spectator | by James Bowman | Oct. 6, 2009
There is one scene in Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story where its writer, director, hero and sole credited actor is examining the copy of the Constitution that is on display in the National Archives. He asks a guard — this is the kind of thing Mr. Moore routinely does for effect, pretending he doesn’t know that the guards are not constitutional experts — where in the document before him there is any mention of free markets, free enterprise or capitalism. He can’t seem to find those words. Could it be that they’re not there? And, if they’re not, does that mean that they’re not constitutionally protected? Not, of course, that one could imagine its mattering to him if they were. But without a specific mention, presumably, we must suppose that these “evil” things — he has the testimony of two lefty priests and a bishop to that effect — must have been snuck into America’s constitutional arrangements at a later date by, well, capitalists — or other, equally unscrupulous sorts. [Read more…]
Acton Institute | by Ray Nothstine | Oct. 21, 2009
Religious left icon Jim Wallis has popularized the maxim, “budgets are moral documents.” Yet the often repeated declaration is true in a way Wallis hasn’t envisioned, signaling bad news for Washington’s big spenders and those stuck footing the bill. Currently this country is facing no greater crisis than out of control spending and a mounting federal debt—a moral problem of prodigious proportions.
The Office of Management and Budget is projecting $9 trillion in deficits over the next ten years. Washington’s leaders have long paid lip service to the crisis, but their actions betray their words. [Read more…]
American Thinker | by Rosslyn Smith | Oct. 5, 2009
Environmentalist dreams are starting to rub Americans raw. Greenpeace has turned its attention to an issue that invites both the reporter and readers to make them the butt of jokes, but which is no laughing matter in the end. They are dumping on the manufacture of plush toilet paper on the grounds that it helps destroy the environment. [Read more…]
FrontPage Magazine | by Vasko Kohlmayer | Sep. 18, 2009
“Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil… you have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people,” concludes Michael Moore in his latest documentary Capitalism: A Love Story.
Moore’s fulmination is neither surprising nor atypical in this era when capitalism finds itself under all-out assault. Having become something of a derogatory term, capitalism gets faulted for almost every societal problem and ill. Blamed for exploitation, poverty, fraud, alienation, crime, racism and nearly everything else, capitalism is increasingly cast as the great villain of our time. [Read more…]
The Weekly Standard | Fred Barnes | Aug. 3, 2009
There’s no evidence Obama has even a sketchy grasp of economics.
Is President Obama an economic illiterate? Harsh as that sounds, there’s growing evidence he understands little about economics and even less about economic growth or job creation. Yet, as we saw at last week’s presidential press conference, he’s undeterred from holding forth, with seeming confidence, on economic issues.
Obama professes to believe in free market economics. But no one expects his policies to reflect the unfettered capitalism of a Milton Friedman. That’s too much to ask. Demonstrating a passing acquaintance with free market ideas and how they might be used to fight the recession–that’s not too much to ask. [Read more…]
WND | Patrick Buchanan | July 18, 2009
After half a century of fighting encroachments upon freedom in America, journalist Garet Garrett published “The People’s Pottage.” A year later, in 1954, he died. “The People’s Pottage” opens thus:
“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.” [Read more…]
Things are getting worse by the day, yet Obama and the communist Democrats are refusing to face reality and do what’s necessary to help businesses and the US economy.
Wall Street Journal | Mortimer Zuckerman | July 14, 2009
The recent unemployment numbers have undermined confidence that we might be nearing the bottom of the recession. What we can see on the surface is disconcerting enough, but the inside numbers are just as bad.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary estimate for job losses for June is 467,000, which means 7.2 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession. The cumulative job losses over the last six months have been greater than for any other half year period since World War II, including the military demobilization after the war. The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion. [Read more…]