Are Obama's hands really clean on "the mess?"

In his new role as the nation's self-appointed rationer of speech, President Obama said this: "I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess."

The word "mess" apparently refers to the recession, the rising total of jobless Americans and the shrinking tax revenue of government at all levels.

Sure, we have other messes. Because of reckless spending by his administration and the Democrat Congress, China now holds unparalleled power to make matters much worse by stepping away from U.S. debt auctions until interest rates rise. There is also the small matter of Russian submarines patrolling off U.S. shores.

But neither of those issues would have materialized if the economy hadn't collapsed.

Why did the economy collapse? Because, for 30 years, the U.S. government carried on an aggressive policy of bullying banks and other lenders to make home loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back.

Where was Obama while all that was happening? For much of the time, he was a community organizer in Chicago, where he worked closely with ACORN, which did its part by picketing banks that were too slow to lend to borrowers who couldn't repay the loans.

For part of the time, Obama was an attorney for ACORN.

In other words, while in Chicago, Obama earned a living by defeating free markets so as to provide benefits to people who couldn't afford to buy them.

Traditionally, banks or other local lenders had provided a check on reckless lending by limiting the maximum size of a loan to the borrower's income, a system that made repayment more likely than not.

In Washington, politicians destroyed that safeguard by setting up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, quasi-government organizations whose function was to promptly buy newly issued mortgages from local lenders. Because they could quickly unload new mortgages to Fannie and Freddie, local lenders no longer had any skin in the game. Now, they had an incentive to be reckless.

Obama benefited personally from Fannie's and Freddie's central place in home financing. After just four years in the U.S. Senate, Obama ranked as the second-biggest recipient of political contributions from the two giants.

Fannie and Freddie contributed to their friends, not their adversaries.

Obama should pivot from populism to capitalism

"President Obama is enamored of government investment in new green technologies, but his problem is timing. It could take years for these efforts to come on stream, including the sorting out of likely winners from losers. Meanwhile, our economy, green shoots and all, could go over a cliff.

As Bill Clinton discovered in the 1990s, private investment can turbocharge an economy, quickly and powerfully. That's why Barack Obama needs to strategically pivot. For starters, he must rein in Washington's new anti-capitalist populism. Then he needs to engage in a new love affair with private sector investment, innovation, and entrepreneurial risk. If he pivots now, he can move us out of this quagmire."

http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/16/news/economy/anti_capitalism_economy_growth.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009071614

Does California vote signal antigovernment tide?

"Americans should look carefully at the anti-politician, anti-government mood exhibited in California this week. Just as Proposition 13 and the anti-tax movement of 1978 were the forerunners of the Reagan presidential victory, so the results of Tuesday's vote are a harbinger of things to come.

The repudiation of the California establishment in the series of initiative defeats could hardly have been more decisive. Five taxing and spending measures were rejected by 62.6 to 66.4 percent of the voters. That is a consistent majority of enormous potential. An even larger majority, 73.9 percent, approved the proposition limiting elected officials' salaries when there is a deficit.

This vote is the second great signal that the American people are getting fed up with corrupt politicians, arrogant bureaucrats, greedy interests and incompetent, destructive government."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2009/05/21/AR2009052103724.html

A call for a Bush incompetence meter

By NICK GILLESPIE (editor of Reason)

"Now that George W. Bush has finally left office, here's a challenge to a nation famous for its proud tradition of invention: Can somebody invent a machine capable of fully measuring the disaster that was the Bush presidency?"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123275512887811775.html