But when you talk to traders and economists, the whisper story is that Bernanke and the Fed are no longer truly independent of the Obama White House and Treasury. As a result, Bernanke will not be able to slow down the...]]> Sat, 30 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Get ready, folks: America is about to buy a car company. As of Monday, we the taxpayers will own more than 70 percent of GM. Whether the company will be formally renamed Government Motors remains to be seen. But that's what it will be.

Instead of putting the failed car enterprise into bankruptcy six months ago -- where Carl Icahn or Wilbur Ross could have bought it -- the Bush administration chose Bailout Nation. Under Team Obama, that bailout has morphed into full-scale government ownership. Twenty billion dollars of TARP money is already invested in GM, with another $50 billion on the way. And that number could easily double unless GM car sales miraculously climb back to 14...]]> Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Does anybody really believe that adding 50 million people to the public health-care rolls will not cost the government more money? About $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion more? At least.

So let's be serious when evaluating President Obama's goal of universal health care, and the idea that it's a cost-cutter. Can't happen. Won't happen. Costs are going to explode.

Think of it: Can anyone name a federal program that ever cut costs for anything? Let's not forget that the existing Medicare system is roughly $80 trillion in the hole.

And does anybody believe Obama's new "public" health-insurance plan isn't really a bridge to single-payer government-run health care? And does...]]> Tue, 05 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 When I first visited with Jack Kemp in his congressional office in Washington, D.C., in the late 1970s, I couldn't help but notice the row of books on his desk. There was Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Benjamin Anderson, and Milton Friedman. And of course there was Jude Wanniski's The Way the World Works.

Jack extracted big ideas from these big books, and he applied them to an American nation that was in big trouble. His detractors called him a jock, just as they called Ronald Reagan a dunce. Yet both men proved their critics wrong.

Working with Wanniski, Arthur Laffer, Robert Mundell, Alan Reynolds, Steve Entin, Norman Ture, and many others, Jack developed an agnostic...]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan's popularity and policies moved American politics firmly to the right. In only 100 days, Barack Obama's politics and policies have shifted America way to the left.

The president is seeking to change the whole relationship between the government and the free-enterprise private sector. He is steering the country away from democratic capitalism and toward his big-government command-and-control vision. We are witnessing a triumph of government bureaucrats over entrepreneurs, investors, and small businesses.

And with Sen. Arlen Specter switching from Republican to Democrat, Obama can now move the nation even further to the left. A...]]> Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 How far will the Obama administration move to assert regulatory control over key sectors of the economy? Are we moving away from democratic capitalism, and toward some sort of corporatist state-directed economy? That could be the biggest stock market and economic-growth issue facing us today.

Stocks plunged almost 300 points on Monday over new fears of bank nationalization. On Tuesday shares recovered about 100 points after Treasury man Tim Geithner testified that repayment of TARP loans would be okay in some cases. But Geithner added that the decision to let banks repay the federal government will largely depend on the credit needs of the broader economy.

So while some...]]> Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Is bailout nation about to strike again? Sure looks like it. According to a bunch of front-page news stories, life-insurance companies are about to get TARPed. This is nuts.The public is clamoring for and end to TARP and bailout nation. That's a key message coming from the heartland tea parties that are cropping up spontaneously around the country. This is turning into a real populist uprising against rising taxes (especially state, local, and property taxes), TARP, and all the federal bailouts -- and the trillions of dollars of deficits and debt being used for financing.If Team Obama ignores this uprising, it has a political tin ear. While commercial banks of all sizes are increasingly...]]>