DESTROYING THE CURRENCY

First under the Bush Administration and even more so under President Obama, the federal government has been seizing power and spending money as it hasn’t done since World War II. But as bold as the Executive Branch has been during this financial crisis, the innovations of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke have been literally unprecedented. Indeed, it is entirely plausible that before Obama leaves office, Americans will be using a new currency.

Bush and Obama have engaged in record peacetime deficit spending; so too did Herbert Hoover and then Franklin Roosevelt (even though in the 1932 election campaign, FDR promised Americans a balanced budget). Bush and Obama approved massive federal interventions into the financial sector, at the behest of their respective Treasury secretaries. Believe it or not, in 1932 the allegedly “do-nothing” Herbert Hoover signed off on the creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which was given billions of dollars to prop up unsound financial institutions and make loans to state and local governments. And as with so many other elements of the New Deal, FDR took over and expanded the RFC that had been started under Hoover.

In the past year, the government has seized control of more than half of the nation’s mortgages, it has taken over one of the world’s biggest insurers, it literally controls major car companies, and it is now telling financial institutions how much they can pay their top executives. On top of this, the feds are seeking vast new powers over the nation’s energy markets (through the House Waxman-Markey “Clean Energy and Security Act” and pending Kerry-Boxer companion bill in the Senate) and, of course, are trying to “reform” health care by creating expansive new government programs.

For anyone who thinks free markets are generally more effective at coordinating resources and workers, these incredible assaults on the private sector from the central government surely must translate into a sputtering economy for years. Any one of the above initiatives would have placed a drag on a healthy economy. But to impose the entire package on an economy that is mired in the worst postwar recession, is a recipe for disaster.
Read the rest... Bob Murphy at The American Conservative

-flynn