It’s long been my opinion that we haven’t been doing business as individuals or corporations under anything resembling a free market system since sometime before Woodrow Wilson.
But what is free market capitalism?
Free market capitalism is basically a system of economics that minimizes government intervention and maximizes the role of the market. Free markets (if left alone) always justly reward quality and productivity and punish the opposite. If you perform well, you’re paid at prevailing market rates. If you don’t, you’re not.
But we don’t have that. We have a marketplace where government, big business, and unions conspire to make each other rich. Which is an artificial market created by politicians intervening on behalf of companies, unions, and special interest groups who reward them with votes and under-the-radar payoffs.
Which brings us to the financial regulation bill under consideration in the Senate this week.
The Democrats strategy is to ignore the details of their bill, demonize Wall Street, and cast conservatives as the pawns of big bankers.
But the Democrats are so close to these “evil titans of finance” they should dispense with the niceties and just go on and get a room already! Let me explain …
Goldman Sachs is in the game for nearly $900,000 since January 2009 to congressional candidates. According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, 69% of the firm’s contributions went to Democrats! 31% went to Republicans.
As Heritage posts today,
Goldman is not opposed to Obama’s Wall Street Bailout Bill at all. As a Goldman official told Politico Monday: “We’re not against regulation. We’re for regulation. We partner with regulators.” This echoes reporting done by The Huffington Post on loopholes in the banking bill. HuffPo was told by a financial services lobbyist: “Obtaining a carve-out isn’t rocket science. Just give Chairman Dodd (D-CT) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) a ****load of money.” And loads of money is what Wall Street has been giving to the authors of the Wall Street Bailout Bill. The Wall Street banker at the center of Goldman’s SEC fraud complaint recently solicited money from his banker friends for Sen. Schumer describing him as “one of the few members of Congress that has consistently supported the hedge fund industry.”
Sens. Dodd and Schumer are not the only ones colluding with bankers to profit from American taxpayers. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) scored $37,000 from a January fundraiser that included Goldman executives. And The Washington Examiner has detailed that not only did President Barack Obama receive seven times as much money from Goldman employees as President Bush did from Enron employees, but then-candidate Obama’s $950,000 2008 total from Goldman executives and employees is the most a politician has raised from a single company since campaign finance reform. It’s also more than the combined Goldman haul of every Republican running for president, Senate and the House.
Heritage rightly dubs this “crony capitalism” and the Democrats seem to be more than twice as adept at it as Republicans have been.
In addition, because of these back-room machinations, we’ve been kicked out of the exclusive club of “Free Economies” and re-classified as “mostly free” by the Index of Economic Freedom.
What’s it all mean for you and your children?
The erosion of economic freedom at the hands of politicians in collusion with big money will continue to retard entrepreneurship and innovation, reduce our standard of living, and leave us in a state of permanent economic want.
Be sure to pass this on to anyone interested in running for office in November.
Michael Fiala
Mason city, Iowa
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