It sounded so tempting back in the fall—a government bailout. Maybe there was a free lunch (and free dinner, and free bedtime snack) after all for failing corporations, provided by the hand of government.
It’s hard to remember, it seems so long ago. Bush was in charge at the time, along with a slightly Democrat Congress. The outcome of the 2008 election was as yet unclear, with the candidates pretty well tied. Obama was a cipher who didn’t seem all that radical to most.
What could go wrong no matter who was at the helm? The panic was on, help was needed, and the government could provide.
There were some warning voices, of course. But they were drowned out in the rush to get help. Unfortunately, the strings that came attached have become cords of iron, ties that bind too tightly.
Why should anyone be surprised at the following phenomenon:
“They’re making business decisions in a way that is political,” John A. Allison IV, chairman of BB&T Bank (BBT), told BusinessWeek at a Beltway gala on June 11. BB&T was cleared this past week to return $3.1 billion in federal bailout money. “Where does it stop? The people making the decisions don’t have the knowledge of the industries, of the institutions, to make good business decisions.”
There’s an attempt being made to block and/or limit it. But although I support that endeavor, my guess is that it’s too little, too late. Obama is now president (in case anyone hasn’t noticed), and his hostility to the creation of private wealth seems mitigated only by his desire to exploit the rich as cash cows for the expansion of the federal government.
The forces arrayed against him appear rather puny at the moment in comparison:
…[T}he U.S. Chamber of Commerce—perhaps the business lobby's most persistent voice against government regulation—picked this week to launch its "Campaign for Free Enterprise." Declaring that "capitalism is at a crossroads," Chamber officials called the effort to "defend and advance America's free enterprise values in the face of rapid government growth and attacks by anti-business activists…one of the most important and necessary initiatives in [the Chamber's] nearly 100-year history.” Two days later, the Chamber sent an open letter to Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) supporting a “transparent exit strategy to ensure the timely withdrawal of the federal government from these most extreme and unusual forms of intervention.”
Thune and other Republicans are sponsoring a bill designed to put a time limit on the government takeovers. It will be interesting to see how the blue dog Democrats respond. My guess is that the bill has no hope of passing; the forces arrayed against it are too strong and too numerous.
And I wonder whether the American people as a whole are paying attention, and what the prevailing attitude is if they are. Obama has tapped into a powerful populist anti-business, anti-wealthy strain in this country. Of course, there is another powerful strain that favors individualism, private enterprise, the opportunity to create wealth and profit by it, and the idea that government has no business running businesses.
At the moment the first group seems to be winning, but will a backlash become strong enough to overwhelm them? And if so, when? And how difficult will it be to undo the damage that has occurred in the meantime?
Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely 
June 13th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Neo,
I don’t know if the increasing tide of government control can be stopped and once in place I seriously doubt these measures will be removed.
I doubt that anyone will have the political, let alone moral courage to even propose it because it would be political suicide and rest assured that all those who you see in government are politicians, with not a statesman among them.
They wouldn’t dare shut down the gravy train anymore than the Roman emperors would have stopped the free bread and circuses to the Roman citizenry. Below is an interesting quote from an interesting and provocative blog post on that very topic.
June 13th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Odd that while Obama seems to have a problem with accumulated wealth he has no problem spending the taxpayers money on fun trips for himself, wife, Mom-in-law, and kids (though the kids are blameless, of course). In thinking back I am trying to remember if Laura Bush took any shopping side trips and I don’t think she did.
Bush took a lot of time away from Washington (which I wasn’t happy with either) but it seems all their vacation time (and I don’t count camp David) was in Crawford.
You know this has nothing to do with saving companies, or jobs, or getting decent health care for people. That is the rationalization for grabbing power and the sad thing is they think they are doing the right thing because their arrogance will not let them believe Americans are capable of making their own decisions.
June 13th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Allow me to offer another link which I think does a stellar job of explaining the relationship between our government and the citizenry, which is pertinent to what is being done by this ship of fools we call Congress and this joke of an administration.
June 13th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Michael Malone has an excellent article, The Obama Surprise, on the growing disillusionment of Silicon Valley for Obama.
The first surprise to many Valleyites is how innately anti-entrepreneurial the new Administration has turned out to be. Candidate Obama looked like a high tech executive – smart, hip, a gadget freak – and he certainly talked pro-entrepreneur. But the reality of the last six months has been very different. One might have predicted that he would use the best tool in his economic arsenal – new company creation and the millions of new jobs those firms in turn create – to fight this recession. But President Obama has instead appeared to be almost exclusively interested in Big Business as the key to economy recovery.
By comparison, almost every move the new Administration has made regarding entrepreneurship seems to be targeting at destroying it in this country. It has left Sarbanes-Oxley intact, added ever-greater burdens on small business owners, called for increasing capital gains taxes, and is now preparing to pile on cap-and-trade, double taxation on offshore earnings, and a host of other new costs. Even Obamacare seems likely to land unfairly on small companies.
Once again, I am horrified at how many smart people piled onto the Obama Express utterly clueless about Obama’s background and lack of experience. About the only silver lining these days is the schadenfreude that these people will be hit as hard and sometimes harder than the rest of us.
June 13th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
[...] here to read the rest: neo-neocon » Blog Archive » Business and Obama: be careful what … Categories: Hobbies Tags: 3-1-billion – beltway – borders – efficiency-and – gala-on-june – [...]
June 13th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
“In the general course of human nature, a power over man’s substance amounts to a power over his will.” Alexander Hamilton
“In a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.” Chief Justice John Marshall
“To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association–the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” Thomas Jefferson
“The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” Thomas Jefferson
“Stupid is as stupid does.” Forrest Gump
I could go on, but you get the drift.
June 13th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
The take over of public education and universities by the left is exacting a terrible toll on our country. Like Britain, France, Germany and eastern Europe, maybe we will have to learn about socialism the hard way.
June 13th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
I’m pinning my hopes on the flaw in their master plan. Namely, once they’ve spread the current wealth, they’ll need some more. Since they are hostile to the only known perpetual generator of wealth, namely free market capitalism, refuse to exploit natural resources and might find taking wealth from conquering other nations problematic, I’m unsure where they’ll get more. The Soviet Union exploited their natural resources and stole from occupied lands. China had to open up to controlled capitalism to continue. Both had the fellow travelers in the West to make cash for them. But when the cash cow of America is slaughtered, who will take her place? How will the Left fund their great plans when they seek to kill the free market, they won’t exploit our natural resources? Well, they could try martial expansion but with even Iran and North Korea getting the bomb, that’ll probably end badly.
June 13th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
huxley,
Why in the world would anyone in silicon valley or the Northwest Megatechopolis that Obama was no friend of theirs (and innovation) after they heard the “Spread the wealth around” comment to Joe the Plumber? Because they are either naive idiot savants or because they were so damn arrogant they couldn’t have possibly thought Obama was talking about “their” wealth. Maybe a little of both.
The only innovative jobs Obama is interested in helping are “green” jobs. But those jobs will be a continual drain on the taxpayers because most of those kind of companies can’t be profitable without the government paying people to buy/use the products they make. For example the solar panels on the Denver Museum of Nature and Science that Obama needed for his backdrop as he signed the porkulus bill (needed them so badly he delayed the signing of the “bill that had to be passed immediately or the country would cease to exist” for four days to do it in Denver). Those solar panels will never pay for themselves. The only way they could be installed was a grant for about 75% of the cost from the federal government.
To all those who told me they were going to vote for Obama I said “Caveat emptor”
To those who “voted” for Obama I now say
“Emptor sinus super” (close as I could get to “buyer bend over”
June 13th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Obamacare
Never gets reversed, until
Rome collapses
June 13th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
I’m happy to see the banks paying back the TARP money. It was predictable that they would. I expect the AIG money isn’t coming back. The Auto money is a no-hoper, and a black hole for future subsidies. I wonder if this is going to give us big problems keeping multi-lateral global trade going.
June 14th, 2009 at 3:26 am
“Humans do have the reasoning faculty, but it is seldom exercised in religious matters.” –Mark Twain
[Or quasi-religious. . . .]
June 14th, 2009 at 5:28 am
Sorry, but Obama has not even remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation.
This problem started with Bush.
See: “America’s Sea of Red Ink Was Years in the Making”
June 14th, 2009 at 7:12 am
Orange, nice try but that dog doesn’t hunt so to speak:
CBO numbers
http://www.flickr.com/photos/98131992@N00/3385114562/sizes/o/
June 14th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Orange: How is Bush responsible for spending after he left office? That’s so blatantly idiotic one can only conclude that either you are too ignorant to be allowed out without a keeper, or you are deliberately lying.
I vote for b. You’re a damned liar.
June 14th, 2009 at 11:40 am
A great quote from the comments section over at SDA;
June 14th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
My fascination with socialism/Marxism began when I was an undergraduate at the University of New Hampshire in 1977, after I got out of the Army in ’76. It goes to show you that even bright 22 year olds can have large gaps in their experience and knowledge. Once in academia, I suddenly felt the presence of an environment where minds could roam and entertain alternate realities that were antidotes for experienced/perceived alienation. Even in the economics department (I was an econ major) there were Marxists. In fact, there were more of them than those who were fans of Friedman and Hayek in those days. And these guys had influence over the business students as well.
Most of you here are familiar with my story, so I need not repeat it here. Even though I broke with Marxism in 1987 definitively, by around ’85 I was having a lot of doubts about it. Increasingly, I was bumping against reality plus more information about how it was a failing and failed system. One of the features of socialist societies is that they are very bureaucratic and that they have some form of nomenklatura. Marxism really is a very deceptive belief system. In truth, it is not a classless society. Rather, it’s a form of oligarchy rather akin to feudalism.
The people in the big corporations and in government bureaucracies like having monopolies and like being the nomenklatura. They don’t want those entrepreneurial upstarts unseating them. The Ivy League graduates, in particular, see themselves are the natural leaders of society in business and government. Therefore, they don’t want to be on an equal footing, in terms of wealth and social status, with those lesser mortals who came up through places that are not hallowed ground.
I learned, from experience, how amoral and venal socialists could be.
June 14th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
An element of government economic control that is about to strike is an increase in the minimum wage. At a time of very high unemployment and business fragility the minimum wage will go up $.70 next month, increasing the cost of hiring lower level employees and driving up the wages of workers already on board. This is going to be an interesting experiment. I’m surprised I’ve not seen anything about it.
June 14th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Trimegistus asks:
Orange: How is Bush responsible for spending after he left office?
Firstly, Bush started creating deficits even though there was no reason to, by fighting “wars of choice” in Afghanistan and, even more stupidly, in Iraq.
Secondly, the economic collapse (in order to address which, the stimulus plan of Obama (which has been responsible for most of the deficit under Obama’s watch so far) became necessary) was caused by the deregulatory policies of which Bush was such a big proponent. (Admittedly, Clinton too has a responsibility as the Clinton administration also pushed for deregulation.)
June 14th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Tim P writes:
In a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives, they cry ‘alienation.’
“Ever richer”?
The EPI briefing paper shows:
“Real wages have been stagnant for many workers in the 2000s. After rising quickly in the second half of the 1990s, most workers real wages have been stagnant in the 2000s, especially since 2003. This result holds for a wide variety of wage and compensation measurements, including those that add the value of fringe benefits.”
See for yourself the graph to see what’s been happening.
June 14th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I wrote:
“See for yourself the graph to see what’s been happening.”
The graph is here, and is also included in the briefing.
June 14th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Orange: I’m way ahead of you. I’ve already written at length about that Times article, here.
June 14th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
neo,
Like you and others on this thread, we are seeing the beginnings of the revisionist spin. I think I’ve seen wisps of this elsewhere too. In four years just before the 2012 election it will still be Booooosh’s fault. I am beginning to sense that the other side is hiding their panic.
Dick Morris and Rush Limbaugh have been talking about how the disapproval ratings of the actual policies are very significant underneath the president’s personal approval ratings. I think about a year from now it will all start to crumble underneath. The State Run Media will not be able to contain. No Nurenburg Rallies and press conferences will be able to stem the tide.
In other words, the Blame Booooosh theme will only have a limited shelf life. I’ve tried to explain to people that the stock markets two weeks before the elections were already starting to price in an Obama four years. It was even then beginning to be his economy, even before he took office. In fact, the spending policies of 2006 through 2008 reflected the Democrats’ majority in Congress. The President had to give something to Pelosi in order for her to not obstruct Iraq war funding. In effect, he could never sustain a Presidential veto over anything.
Really, 2006 was the deciding year for it all. 2008 was just continuing the momentum from that ’06 election.
June 14th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Orange,
You seem to have an incredibly short memory – either that or you weren’t yet old enough to really be paying attention, or you’re deliberately lying.
Afghanistan was invaded because the Taliban who ruled over it with an iron fist refused to turn over Al Quaeda, which was given sanctuary within Afghanistan post- 9-11.
They were given repeated opportunities to do so, and informed in no uncertain terms that we WOULD invade them if they did not cooperate in turning over the terrorists responsible for murdering approximately 3,000 innocent people on US soil.
They knew what was going to happen, and chose to gamble that the US would back down.
They gambled wrong, and now a developing democratically elected government is in place. It’s imperfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what it replaced.
Saying Afghanistan was a war of “choice” really is an indecent twisting of history and the facts.
June 14th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Orange,
Sigh, another troll.
You said,
Let’s see, you take a statement from a linked essay,you misunderstand it and then draw an unsupported conclusion which has no relation to the original statement. Indeed you are a product of today’s public education system.
First point, I did not write, “In a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives, they cry ‘alienation.’.” I quoted a portion of an essay written by Alan Charles Kor.
Second point, you say “Ever richer”? You take a statement that broadly speaking is true and try to cite specific statistics which, I might add do not really refute what the author said and try to imply that the statement, ergo must be false.
First, American wages may have not gained considerably but that by no means invalidates what the author said. We are still the richest society on this planet, though our growth may have stagnated. If you doubt it, just ask some of the immigrants, legal and illegal who are flooding our shores. Reality.
Another point here is that citing a so called study by a biased leftist organization doesn’t mean it’s true. I don’t wholly disagree with the fact of wage growth (emphasis on growth) having slowed for the lesser skilled segment of the work-force, that’s a no-brainer when the same work can be done abroad for far less cost in labor. My salary growth certainly hasn’t slowed, but I’m in engineering and we may be atypical. I won’t delve further into the specifics of the study here & now. I have neither the time or the inclination.
However, just looking at who serves on the board of this organization and the type of bilge they put out tells any thinking person all they need to know.
A representative sample;
From Congress> that stellar body of economists who gave us the ‘stimulus’
Rep. Linda T. Sánchez, U.S. House of Representatives- a woman who takes a dim view of free speech. Wonderful.
Former labor secretary under the Clintons and noted leftist, Robert B. Reich, University of California, Berkeley. A man who publicly advocated keeping stimulus money away from skilled workers and ‘white’ construction workers. Stellar intellect there!
Assorted Union shills;
R. Thomas Buffenbarger, International Association of Machinists & Allied Workers (IAMAW)
Larry Cohen, Communications Workers of America (CWA)
Leo W. Gerard, United Steelworkers of America (USWA)
Ron Gettelfinger, United Auto Workers (UAW)
Ed McElroy, American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
Gerald W. McEntee, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)
Andrew L. Stern, Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
Richard L. Trumka, AFL-CIO
Various undistinguished academics who you can look up for yourself at their site. Any guess as to which way they lean given Sanchez and Reich? I’d look them up but I have better things to do.
A couple of guys who cite only the EPI;
Jeff Faux, Economic Policy Institute
Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute
Gee there’s a recommendation for credibility!
And finally, some guy out of nowhere, or the long dead Mississippi blues-man, take your pick;
Robert Johnson
Personally, I hope it’s not the Mississippi blues-man because I really do like his music. (i.e. Crossroads, etc.)
So Agent Orange, you really should be more a) discriminating in your sources and b) more cautious in your conclusions.
In an amazing flash of stupidity you went on to say, in a different comment, “Bush started creating deficits even though there was no reason to, by fighting “wars of choice” in Afghanistan and, even more stupidly, in Iraq.
1. Do you even remember 9/11?
2. Do you remember the Clinton administration and Congress passing a resolution advocating regime change in Iraq? And many ofl the democrats going on record as knowing, just knowing, that Iraq had weapons of mass-destruction? (You can look that stuff up on You-tube yourself.)
3. By your logic was declaring war on Japan after Pearl Harbor a ‘war of choice’?
4. Was our declaring or war against Nazi Germany also stupid since they never attacked us?
IF you want to advocate a different point of view that’s contrary to the gist of this blog, that’s cool. Discussion is good. If you want to be a troll, at least try to be a smart one and don’t just waltz in and parrot brainless leftard talking points that anyone with an IQ larger than their shoe size knows is a croc of shit.
June 14th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Sorry about missing a tag to end the ‘bold’ on the comment above. My bad.
June 14th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Scottie says:
“Afghanistan was invaded because the Taliban who ruled over it with an iron fist refused to turn over Al Quaeda, which was given sanctuary within Afghanistan post- 9-11.
Saying Afghanistan was a war of “choice” really is an indecent twisting of history and the facts.”
You say that Afghanistan was invaded because the Taliban refused to turn over Bin Laden.
But Bin Laden still has’t been captured, has he?
So, what did the invasion of Afghanistan accomplish? Nothing.
The Al Queda merely shifted from Afghanistan to tribal areas in Pakistan.
June 15th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Orange:
Dear Sir or Madam or Inanimate Object:
Thanks for using me recently. Please note Afghanistan and Iraq have already been discussed ad nauseum on this blog and elsewhere on me.
Let’s try and focus, shall we? But since I know your type and you’ll be wasting my bandwidth with trollish posts, let’s just begin here, old chap, mmkay?
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.4655.ENR:
June 15th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Orange is between 12 and 19 years old.
Lecturing us. We’ve been there and discussed that.
Bored and moving on – hopefully orange can have a more meaningful discussion in future posts….
June 15th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
I wonder how much Soros pays trolls per anti-American post. Thirty pieces of silver is traditional, I believe, but after 2000 years of inflation, who knows?
June 15th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
I wouldn’t put out such propoganda for one million dollars.
Indecent proposal at it’s finest I’d say.
But there are always the loser’s who need the money I suppose. Let’s bankrupt this finest nation by selling our soul!
Liberalism is a mental disease…
I know – I was there in 1991 until I evolved
June 15th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
do you really think Obama is hostile to private wealth or is he actually trying to get the wealth redirected into the hands of people like him?
certain girls I know who dreamed about marrying investment bankers a few years ago are now saying they want to marry guys going into politics & government
June 15th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Not hard to get folks to vote themselves other people’s money.
Trouble is, as Margaret Thatcher remarked about socialism, Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Another article from Laffer
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124458888993599879.html
hmmm…
June 16th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Orange,
So, in your opinion, just because Bin Laden himself was not captured or killed then the effort in Afghanistan was a waste?
I’d LOVE to see you strut down main street in Fayetteville or Jacksonville, NC and make that claim.
I’d bet money you’d not make it to the other end before one of Uncle Sam’s finest corrected your misconceptions in very direct, physical terms.
Or perhaps even one of the Northern Alliance areas within Afghanistan itself – though you may not actually survive that kind of encounter.
You seem to ignore the killing and/or capture of all of the lesser Al Quaeda operatives who aided and abetted Bin Laden and his cronies, and were every bit as guilty of mass murder as that a$$hat Bin Laden.
Some of these a$$holes were pretty high up in the AQ organization – and the US creating circumstances that resulted in their achieving room temperature (or perhaps desert temperature may be more appropriate?) has in fact severely crippled this organization as well as it’s ability to launch another major terrorist attack on US soil or US interests.
You should ask Soros for higher pay to appear so gullible – or stupid.