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PrintAugust 25, 2009
Well on our way down the 'Road to Serfdom'
President Obama's has no experience in the business world and has an antipathy towards capitalism and free enterprise. His Cabinet choices share in his ignorance of business-none of them have real world business experience. His various czars also have resumes shorn of operating experience in the real world. Now comes two news items that reveal even more that his true agenda is to place the levers of power in our society into the hands of left-wingers who share his views.
He has chosen a leader in the AFL-CIO union to be head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank-easily the most important position among the 12 regional Fed banks. John Hilsenrath of the Wall Street Journal has the details:
Denis Hughes, president of the New York state branch of the AFL-CIO, had been serving as acting chairman of the New York Fed board since May, when Stephen Friedman stepped down from the position.
Mr. Friedman, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chairman and adviser to President George W. Bush, had faced questions about his purchases of Goldman stock while serving on the New York Fed's board.
The Fed decision formalizes Mr. Hughes's role as chairman through the end of 2009. The Fed board in Washington will announce in November or December who will serve as chairman in 2010. Columbia University President Lee Bollinger was named deputy chairman, a position that Mr. Hughes previously held. Mr. Bollinger has been a New York Fed director since January 2007.
The New York Fed chairmanship typically has gone to prominent Wall Street executives or academics. The ascension of a labor leader is a new twist for the New York Fed and a sign of the public pressure the Fed has been under to loosen its close ties to Wall Street.
"In the old days, labor was on the outside looking in," said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University.
If Obama's goal was to draw a celar line between Wall Street executives and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York he could have chosen an economics professor. Instead, he chose a labor leader who may be more schooled in extracting concessions from corporate America than the intricacies of high finance.
But this is a nice feather in the cap for union leaders who spend so much of their members' union dues and devoted so much of their free labor to elect Barack Obama. Welcome to Chicago pay-to-play politics. Will America end up paying the price for having a labor leader from a union known for its aggressive anti-business views and actions as one of the more powerful positions in the Federal Reserve firmament?
But the President is not sated. He may have helped empower unions by naming a union leader to an important finance role; but what about the manufacturing side of our economy? He has that covered , too.
Ron Bloom, US Car Czar, is on the verge of being named the "manufacturing czar" according to John Weisenthal of The Business Insider:
According to the Detroit Free Press, US Car Czar Ron Bloom (the sidekick and then successor to Steve Rattner), is set to shift to become the manufacturing czar. His task will be to oversee the rebirth of American manufacturing, a sector that's decline in significance over the decades, but which potentially could be a great source of new, post-real estate jobs.
He will be in place to enact a new industrial policy - one that will most likely favor unions at the expense of business and growth. Why this speculation? Bloom was a special assistant to the president of the Unites Steelworkers Union.
Placing the hands of American industry in the hands of a union man sounds like a guarantee that more manufacturing companies will look overseas when it comes to investing in new plants and in terms of hiring new workers.
Clearly, Obama believes in a no-growth economy. What happens in a no-growth economy? It becomes a redistributionist economy - one that comports well with Obama's stated desire to "spread the wealth".
As the books of Ayn Rand has enjoyed a huge boost in sales as the contours of Obama's agenda has become clearer, so will Friedrcih von Hayek's, "Road to Serfdom"
