Obama’s “Pro-Business” Policies Are Killing the Free Market
Last night President Barack Obama held a behind-closed-door dinner with 17 chief executive officers from major U.S. corporations including Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, Verizon Communications’ Ivan Seidenberg, and General Electric’s Jeffrey Immelt. According to Bloomberg, the President made the case to his select guests that his administration is “fundamentally business-friendly.” This comes almost two weeks after the President told BusinessWeek: “[T]he irony is, is that on the left we are perceived as being in the pockets of Big Business. And then on the business side, we are perceived as being anti-business.”
What the President fails to understand is that there is no irony here. It is entirely consistent for big government policies that favor select and politically connected big corporations to hurt the economy as a whole. In fact, almost all well-intentioned government interventions in the market place do exactly that. In a July 2009 interview with BusinessWeek, President Obama spoke of an earlier behind-closed-door meeting he had with top corporate executives:
The last lunch that I had, I guess we had the CEOs of Xerox (XRX), AT&T (T), Honeywell (HON), and Coke (KO). We talked about the fact that, in the 1980s, when everybody was afraid Japan was going to eat our lunch, a lot of companies did a 180 in terms of quality improvement, efficiency, increasing productivity. There was a change in corporate culture that significantly boosted corporate productivity for a long time and helped create the boom of the ’90s. What they pointed out was, there were a couple of sectors that were resistant to that: health care, education, energy, and government.…
[What we're saying] matches up almost perfectly with what those CEOs were saying: Can we introduce the same sort of productivity in the health-care industry, which we know is going to be a growing sector because of the aging population? Can we use the need to transition our energy economy in such a way that it ends up being a huge engine for economic growth? Can we revamp our education system so that it’s producing the kind of workers we need? … we need to get beyond this notion that somehow government is always just the problem.
But as others have pointed out, the reason the health care, education, and energy sectors all failed to improve quality, efficiency, and productivity in the 80s is because those sectors were, and continue to be, the sectors most dominated by government intervention: our education system is a near total government monopoly; the federal government controls the majority of health care spending in this country, and our environmental laws make new energy development in this country virtually impossible. But President Obama seems completely oblivious to these facts. He is supremely confident that his government “pro-business” interventions will be ahistorically successful. And so he confidently tells BusinessWeek: “You would be hard-pressed to identify a piece of legislation that we have proposed out there that, net, is not good for businesses.”
Never mind that President Obama’s cap and trade proposal would be worth billions to select power companies but cost the U.S. economy as a whole trillions of dollars. Never mind that his health care plan would turn health insurance companies into public-utility like monopolies at tremendous cost to small businesses. Never mind that the President’s big labor-friendly tax hikes would cripple American competitiveness. President Obama’s “pro-business” TARP related actions helped lower the United States rank in the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, from “free” to “mostly free.” The President must stop having behind-closed-door meetings with his favorite CEOs and start pursuing an economic agenda that helps everyone.
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President Obama’s “Pro-Business” Policies Are Killing the Free Market
I am not a financial wizard. I never have claimed to be. My expertise is focused in *other areas*. But I do have friends that ARE financial wizards. They have been involved in the business of finance and so forth for many years and I value their opinions greatly.
I wanted to post this earlier in the day but I sent it to my friends for their perusal and opinion on it’s accuracy before I posted it to the blog. They say the accuracy of this piece is 100 percent on the money!
My friend and I talked, at great length, and I listened intently.
It seems that he and I are on the same page in our opinion that Barack Hussein Obama is indeed destroying the American financial institution. It is a shared opinion that Obama hasn’t got a clue about American business or the FREE MARKET, and will NOT listen to those that do.
There are some great financial and business minds that are trying, in every way possible, to wake Obama up and show him what his policies are doing to American business.
Business owners could probably expand, at least to some degree, but they are afraid to do so at this particular point in time. They are afraid of socialization, exorbitant taxes, outright seizure of their assets if the Obama administration deems them to be TOO successful and decides that it is in the best interest of ALL to SPREAD THE WEALTH!
Barack Hussein Obama is like a lot of past Presidents, he has some decent advisers and they give him some great advice. He only listens to what HE wants to hear apparently.
Barack Hussein Obama has never held a job. He was, supposedly, a professional student, but had no discernible source of income. He was nothing more than a community organizer before he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He provided pro bono advice to his followers and supporters. He represented people like ACORN.
Obama may be a great legal mind, I don’t know, I have my doubts, many claim that there are no definitive records of his attending law school.
Be that as it may, Obama has absolutely NO financial expertise, none!
Yet he is trying to run the business interests in America, run, or tell others how to run their businesses, foreign or domestic.
All that from a man that has never had a REAL job!
If the story from The Heritage foundation doesn’t open up the eyes of the American people, on ALL sides of the political spectrum, if this doesn’t show the entire nation that Obama really IS killing this nation, nothing ever will.
When business dies, America dies!
This is a great post Fred-I have long held the view that if government would just get out of our way, it would open the avenue of innovation and productivity the likes of which we have never seen. BHO cannot understand what the everyday person has to go through. People who earn paychecks have to be productive, self-motivated and innovative every day to keep their jobs. BHO cannot understand what that is like. Governments produce nothing, create nothing, stimulate nothing…all they do is take.
I think most reasonable and logical people can agree that while we do not like to see poverty and disparity in our societies; it has and will always be there. There will always be those who create and innovate and choose to be productive in some way; and then there are those who are content to live off of a society. BHO thinks by taking from those that produce and giving it to those that do not produce, he truly believes he can close that disparity gap.
Good post Fred. What is happening now in the business and finacial markets is by design. The marxist/progressive movement finally has their chance to remake the country. Obama is their conduit. Things will get much worse before they get better unless Obama is stopped dead in his tracks.
Obama is like the trophy wife of a billionaire. Spending freely with someone else’s money. And he’s not even cute.
If we don’t cut up his credit card, and soon, there will be no business, no liberties, no USA as we use to know it.
Once again Obama invites all the union based big businesses that he courts with leftist policies and fails to recognize that 85% of all employment and business is small business. His idea of pro-business is pro-union.
To stimulate growth in any business, we need a secure generally stable environment. The Obama Administration and the current congress lack both in security and stability. If anything, this group is the most unstable of the last 10 congresses.
I loved the line - Get Your Liberal Ass Off My Freedom.
Sounds like the evil Libertarian streak that a lot of conservatives have inside them…
A major part of the Alinsky plan was / is to disrupt the business factor of our society. The impostor in chief, is an Alinski disciple, as is Clinton, Pelosi et al.
Destroy free markets, destroy liberty and freedom with the intent of causing unrest and distrust in those institutions, and then charge to the rescue with ever more big government…
Obama is certainly no businessman and most assuredly not a free trader, he is however a free spender. Obama fits the progressive mold to a tee—regulation and control for business and free wheeling latitude for big labor. The end result here is always the same decreased production, shortages, inflation, stagnation and ultimately collapse. Does Obama know what he’s doing? Is this his plan? I don’t know! But in either case the result is the same and not pretty. If this is a game its a tricky one with far too many wild cards and no guaranteed results for Obama and gang.
For a man who never ran a business nor got a degree in economics, he certainly knows something about the economy.
What that something is, nobody knows. But I do know it is not how to run an economy.
President Muslim said today he is not socialist. I believe President Muslim is a bold faced liar. Someone please tell me where this Muslim came from. If you listen you can hear the Ruskies and Chicoms laughing at us. The borders are a damn sieve, muzzies plotting against us, bunch of god damn spineless republicans. Rush is right, in order for the TEA Party, or any other true conservative group to gain a foothold we need people who can lead and be trusted. Pulling up the draw bridge ain’t working anymore. Sorry friends but these parasites are inside the wire.
ADMIN NOTE: Never, ever call the TEA Party or it’s members teabaggers on this blog again.
Patrick summed it up nicely in his comment. Great post Fred. The Saul Alinsky styled extremists are targeting not only the Free Market but our Economy. They are weakening our National Defense too. I hope and pray every day that it will be stopped and crushed. We must persevere and insist on accountability come the Primaries and General Election. So many on Capitol Hill need to be handed their walking papers!