Obama Understands Force

Does President Barack Obama understand that government equals force? Yes he does.

Direct evidence can be found in his February 24, 2009 speech before a joint session of Congress. Consider the following lines:

"We will act with the full force of the federal government to ensure that the major banks that Americans depend on have enough confidence and enough money to lend even in more difficult times. And when we learn that a major bank has serious problems, we will hold accountable those responsible, force the necessary adjustments, provide the support to clean up their balance sheets, and assure the continuity of a strong, viable institution that can serve our people and our economy."

To be sure, we need more people talking about it and objecting to it. Government force interfering in free market decisions is the problem, not the solution. Fraud, where it occurred should be prosecuted. Regulators who looked directly at such fraud and either failed to recognize it or failed to act when they did, should be fired. The agencies that hire these ineffective agents should quit pretending they can stop fraud and concentrate on prosecuting cases when they are found. This would open up the door to expanded rating services paid for voluntarily by consumers who expect results.

Brewster's Billions

After a long hiatus, I am back and posting... I published the bit below previously this month at a meetup group I head up. I decided I wanted to put it here too. Here's the funny part. Have you heard the term, GMTA? For those who haven't, it means Great Minds Think Alike. It usually is mentioned when someone you know expresses something you also said or were thinking. It also means to not so subtley infer that both the other person and you have great minds -- kind of a internet version of a pat on one's own back.

Today I feel it is appropriate that I GMTA the below bit. You see, I had forgotten where I posted it. I post to way too many blogs, and forums, mostly others peoples blogs (OPBs?) I did a search on three key terms from it and found I was not the only one to draw the analogy I did. Others obviously drew the parallel a little differently, but they did think the stimulus bill aka H.R. 1 (111th Congress) reminded them of the movie, Brewster's Millions. For the record, some of those who shared my inspiration were Michael Grunwald of time.com (Time/CNN,) The Economist (uncredited author), Dustin Block at racinepost.com, Justice Litle at financialsense.com, Mike Lilis at "The Washington Independent,"George White at thedeal.com, and David Sirota at thehuffingtonpost.com (actually Lilis' and Sirota's Brewster was Henry Paulson and they were referring to the TARP, not H.R. 1,) And without further adieu, here is my particular version...

I was thinking of the stimulus bill and a great parallel came to mind.

One of my favorite campy comedy movies from the eighties was Brewster's Millions where Richard Pryor's character, Monty Brewster is the recipient of a strange codicil in a will. Seems he is the only living ancestor of a multi-millionaire and his now dead relative has checked him out and knows he will spend every last dime if he leaves him the whole thing.

We watch as a tape of the old man plays and he explains that he will give Monty a million to walk away in which case a trust gets the money. He calls this the wimp option or something like that. OR, he can take the big challenge. If he can spend $50 million in one month and not have anything to show for it at the end of the month... no assets remaining from it, then he gets the entire $500 million fortune under the premise that if he spent that much money and had nothing to show for it, it would cure him of his drunk-sailor-on-leave spending habits. One of the conditions that makes it interesting is, Brewster can't tell anyone why he's spending all that money. Of course Brewster goes for the brass ring and hilarity ensues.

At one point early on, he hires a team of security guards with new uniforms to protect his money. Of course, in doing so, he helps make a good chunk of it do just that -- disappear via the huge salaries, rented uniforms, and limos to haul them around.

And that is exactly what is happening with H.R. 1 aka the stimulus bill. They're gonna spend so much money trying to avert national financial ruin, they're gonna ensure it.

(errata - It was actually $30 million and $300 million respectively in the movie. I was going from memory. The concept remains unchanged however.)

It dawns on me now, there was another great parallel between Brewster's Millions and what's going on in Washington lately. Brewster used a good chunk of his money on a joke political campaign called, "None of the Above." He urged the people of New York City to reject the two mainstream candidates and vote for none of the above. We will look back at this point in history, I think, and wish we had voted for Ron Paul who is nothing like Obama, Bush, or any of the big government Republicrats that are ruining this country. Ron Paul would have vetoed H.R. 1 without hesitation.