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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review January 15, 2009 / 19 Teves 5769

Attach anti-socialism rider to bailout funds

By Dick Morris & Eileen Mc Gann


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | With both George Bush and Barack Obama pressing the new Congress to appropriate the remaining $350 billion in authorized bailout funds, the Congress has a historic opportunity to demonstrate its preference for the free enterprise system over socialism. Congress should give Obama these funds, weapons in the war against the depression, but ought to attach an amendment prohibiting the federal government from using the leverage the funds give it — and any equity it may acquire in these companies as a result of these funds — to influence corporate lending, hiring, management or other practices.


The federal fire department has come to the rescue of these burning companies in the midst of their economic conflagration. The question now is whether the fire fighters will go home. Or will they stay on to live in the house they have just saved from the flames, even evicting the homeowners? Will the feds now say, in effect, "We saved you, now we own you?"


The crucial difference between the approach favored by House Republicans and former Speaker Newt Gingrich and the bailout that was passed in October of last year was that the Republicans contemplated using insurance and loans, not outright grants, to shore up endangered companies. One key reason for their resistance to giving away grants was the realization that the Democrats would demand that the "taxpayers get something back" for all the capital they were giving banks. Inevitably, they realized, federal aid would come with a demand for government-owned stock in the companies receiving the assistance.


Now that the feds have become stockholders in our major banks and insurance companies, the question is: What will they do with this power?


Hanging in the balance will be whether the United States continues to follow free-market economics or chooses to emulate the no-growth, government-dominated economies that prevail in Western Europe. Will we cash in our capitalist system for a socialist democracy?


It is easy to see how socialism could start. Federal regulators might demand, with some justice, that banks limit their compensation and bonus packages to senior executives, just as they have already made manifest their displeasure at AIG's party loving, frat-jock ways. From there, the feds could go to imposing affirmative action goals on hiring and promotion, government guidance on lending decisions, proscriptions on redlining and the like.


It is great that Citibank has agreed to work in bankruptcy courts with defaulting lenders to restructure and reduce loan payments and even to cut interest rates or forgive principal. But it is dangerous that Citi's enlightenment came not from inner virtue but from pressure by its federal government benefactors.


Even if we do not evolve into a European-style government with permanent ownership positions in key banks and insurance companies and a public sector that is not shy about issuing orders, we could go the way of Japan very easily. Tokyo needs no such formal power, a word to the wise whispered into a banker's ear by a MITI bureaucrat can achieve sudden changes in bank policy.


The result of this public power over private companies has been a kind of crony capitalism that has brought economic growth to a standstill in Japan, as it has in Europe. Too often the public regulators guess wrong, as when Japan told its industry to focus on mainframe computers rather than laptops.


And there is always a Rod Blagojevich somewhere, scheming to get rich by demanding kickbacks from publicly subsidized banks and insurance companies. Political cronyism and corruption seep into private business decisions when the door is opened by taxpayer subsidies and government stock holdings.


The solution is clear. President-elect Obama wants the $350 billion to be at his beck and call when he takes office. He's right to want it. But Congress should attach an amendment limiting the role the federal government can play in the ownership, management, policies and operations of the companies to which it pays this bailout money. We want bailouts, not a government takeover in disguise. s

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JWR contributor Dick Morris is author, most recently, of "Fleeced: How Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies ... Are Scamming Us ... and What to Do About It". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Comment by clicking here.



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