The Foundation
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” – Thomas Jefferson
Conservative Talkers
David Limbaugh | Strikingly Unpresidential
President Barack Obama doesn’t deserve the reputation he’s had for his style and temperament and for being gracious, civil, bipartisan and post-racial. He is often ungracious, uncivil, hyper-partisan, race-oriented and vindictive. He mocks and ridicules almost for sport. More than any president in my memory, he often does not comport himself presidentially.
Mona Charen | Another Bubble Inflating?
The Democrats’ narrative about the financial crisis of 2008 (and the justification for financial reform) goes like this: Investment bankers, typified by Goldman Sachs, manipulated markets, bamboozled investors, and in their greed, managed to bring the entire economy to its knees. The solution is more strenuous government regulation. Republicans, who are beholden to Wall Street, are blocking reform.
The Democrats excel at presenting legislative tableaux with predigested morals: Stern Democratic lawmaker grills slippery Wall Street executive. Democrats for the people; Republicans for the fat cats.
Do people really buy this anymore? Everyone I know who works on Wall Street is a Democrat. Anecdotes are not evidence, but consider this: According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Democrats received $11.3 million in contributions from hedge funds in 2008. Republicans got $5.9 million. Some critics of the Dodd bill note that it would give broad discretion to the FDIC and a new regulator to decide which firms would be bailed out and which would not. That isn’t so much preventing another crisis as institutionalizing “too big to fail.” The moral hazard problem — i.e., encouraging risky practices with the implicit or explicit promise of a bailout — remains.
