"A Free Market Could Have Prevented This"

The most disgusting and disheartening aspect of the current financial crisis has been the false accusations lobbied at the innocent free market in efforts to assign political blame. American Democrats especially have been guilty of this misdirection, using it to push for massive intervention in the economy which is precisely what we're seeing in their constantly-expanding pork-laden stimulus package.

Frustratingly, many defenders of capitalism appear to concede the point in their arguments. They argue for limited government and free markets without understanding or explaining what would separate those policies from the ones that got us into this mess. What's worse, these arguments are now frequently heard being spouted by CEOs and business executives. If you can't count on big business to defend capitalism, who is there left?

Luckily, there are still a few rational businessmen remaining, foremost among them John Allison, former CEO of BB&T Corp, which has been one of the few large banks capable of turning a major profit in recent years:

"[A] lot of financial institutions did dumb stuff," says Allison. "[B]ut they did it in the context of a government system that was misleading. I mean, probably all of us were misled." "Once you had this government -- through the Federal Reserve, through the [Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.], through Freddie Mac -- supporting this expansion of housing, it's easy to believe that housing prices won't ever fall," he says. "That was the context in [which] very poor decisions were made."

Allison puts this point quite clearly. Yes, poor business decision were made but they would not have occurred - at least, not for very long - had the state not encouraged short-sighted business policies through government intervention. The free market demands honesty from corporations whereas the government demands only a decent lobby group. In a free market, your decisions are either based in reality and so will prove to be profitable or they are based in self-deception or altruism and so your company will fail. This equation changes, however, once you introduce the element of government. What is sensible is no longer the ultimate standard for earning a profit and this fundamental shift reverberates through every corner of the market. We have witnessed the effects of this distortion since the 1990s.

Unlike many alleged capitalists, Mr. Allison is unwilling to let the free market take the fall for something that should clearly be laid at the feet of the government.

On the TARP bailout:

As the financial crisis takes its toll on both healthy and troubled institutions, Allison is highly critical of what he suggests is an overregulated banking industry. He says mistakes made by the Clinton and Bush administrations led to an inevitable crash in the sector. More recently, the Treasury's bailout efforts though the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, has been misguided in its approach to the problem, he says.

"This is potentially the worst economic correction that I experienced in my career," he says. "What's unique in this correction was the panic created unfortunately by the Treasury, the Fed and [former President Bush] in October."

On the "bailout & pray" approach to the state's business policy:

Allison takes issue with the government's ability to produce -- "out of the blue" -- $700 billion for the bailout package; the "incredible arbitrariness" of saving some banks and letting others fail; and the lack of consistency within the plan so far, he says.

"Markets hate that kind of stuff," Allison says.

On where this recession started:

Allison says the roots of this downturn were laid out by years of easy credit and misguided policies from the Fed and Republican and Democratic administrations.

For one, the aggressively low interest-rate management by former Fed Alan Greenspan created the "illusion of low risk" in the economy that caused consumers and investors to "save less" and "make more risky investments," he says. From the early 1990s through 2007, "we didn't have a meaningful correction," he says.

"Every time there was a bump, the Fed did everything they could to smooth that bump out," he says. "[W]hat they did was defer the problems and create a much bigger problem."

...

Most importantly, he took issue with the Clinton administration's affordable housing policy objectives, which ultimately led to the solidification of government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as major players in the mortgage market.

"Homeownership is a good thing in a broad context, but encouraging people to buy homes they can't afford is not a good thing," he says. "If you want to look at the proximate cause for this mess you got to focus on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They would have never existed in the free market. They drove the mortgage market."

This is a crucial point. As Kevin Gaudet from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation pointed out in a previous video, the government has begun picking and choosing which banks and institutions are worthy of saving and which ones can be allowed to burn. Unsurprisingly, the banks that they are anointing as "Too Big To Fail" are for the most part the profoundly inefficient ones.

Allison has a practical suggestion for the President:

He suggests that the government offer homebuyers a 10% tax credit to encourage consumers to purchase homes that are already built or in the process of being built in order to clear the excessive inventory. The tax credit would "create a floor on the housing market," he says.

"That's very important ... to the capital markets," he says. "... So even if it meant house prices were going to go down another 10%, but you knew that's where they were going to stop, then you could re-price the capital markets and value all this stuff."

If most business executives had Mr. Allison's integrity, the government would have never been allowed to get away with the wholesale distortion of market forces that it did and we would not be looking at one of the worst recessions in the history of the global economy.

As Allison puts it, "A free market could have prevented this."

Chilling Question Of The Day: Is China More Capitalist Than The US?

AP:

While China improves its business climate by lowering the burden of state confiscation, the US plans to increase it, and in some cases by a significant amount. Meanwhile, the House last night voted 237-170 to sink $15 billion into the American auto industry, with government officially owning part of three private auto makers in order to dictate to management how to run their businesses. Management welcomed the move, and in fact wanted Congress to buy an even bigger stake in these companies.

[...]

When one looks to Beijing for rational tax policies … well, that’s just a sad day for Americans, even if it does portend a brighter future for China.

I recall a day when 'grace under fire' was considered a supreme virtue in business and inviting government into the management of your company an unthinkable ignominy. The American response to the current financial crisis, and particularly the clambering of the corporate community for government handouts, suggests just how far America has strayed from this vision of honourable conduct in business. Is China actually more capitalist than America? Of course not. But when the question can be asked without the intention of provoking laughter, something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

The Reason Obamaism Won't Last

As long as people like this exist, America will remain true to its spirit.

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Mr. Obama,

Given the uproar about the simple question asked you by Joe the plumber, and the persecution that has been heaped on him because he dared to question you, I find myself motivated to say a few things to you myself. While Joe aspires to start a business someday, I already have started not one, but 4 businesses. But first, let me introduce myself. You can call me “Cory the well driller”. I am a 54 year old high school graduate. I didn’t go to college like you, I was too ready to go “conquer the world” when I finished high school. 25 years ago at age 29, I started my own water well drilling business at a time when the economy here in East Texas was in a tailspin from the crash of the early 80’s oil boom. I didn’t get any help from the government, nor did I look for any. I borrowed what I could from my sister, my uncle, and even the pawn shop and managed to scrape together a homemade drill rig and a few tools to do my first job. My businesses did not start as a result of privilege. They are the result of my personal drive, personal ambition, self discipline, self reliance, and a determination to treat my customers fairly. From the very start my business provided one other (than myself) East Texan a full time job. I couldn’t afford a backhoe the first few years (something every well drilling business had), so I and my helper had to dig the mud pits that are necessary for each and every job with hand shovels. I had to use my 10 year old, 1/2 ton pickup truck for my water tank truck (normally a job for at least a 2 ton truck).

A year and a half after I started the business, I scraped together a 20% down payment to get a modest bank loan and bought a (28 year) old, worn out, slightly bigger drilling rig to allow me to drill the deeper water wells in my area. I spent the next few years drilling wells with the rig while simultaneously rebuilding it between jobs. Through these years I never knew from one month to the next if I would have any work or be able to pay the bills. I got behind on my income taxes one year, and spent the next two years paying that back (with penalty and interest) while keeping up with ongoing taxes. I got behind on my water well supply bill 2 different years (way behind the second time… $80,000.00), and spent over a year paying it back (each time) while continuing to pay for ongoing supplies C.O.D.. Of course, the personal stress endured through these experiences and years is hard to measure. I do have a stent in my heart now to memorialize it all.

I spent the next 10 years developing the reputation for being the most competent and most honest water well driller in East Texas. 2 years along the way, I hired another full time employee for the drilling business so that we could provide full time water well pump service as well as the well drilling. Also, 3 years along the path, I bought a water well screen service machine from a friend, starting business # 2. 5 years later I made a business loan for $100,000.00 to build a new, higher production, computer controlled screen service machine. I had designed the machine myself, and it didn’t work out for 3 years so I had to make the loan payments without the benefit of any added income from the new machine. No government program was there to help me with the payments, or to help me sleep at night as I lay awake wondering how I would solve my machine problems or pay my bills. Finally, after 3 years, I got the screen machine working properly, and that provided another full time job for an East Texan in the screen service business.

2 years after that, I made another business loan, this time for $250,000.00, to buy another used drilling rig and all the support equipment needed to run another, larger, drill rig. This provided another 2 full time jobs for East Texans. Again, I spent a couple of years not knowing if I had made a smart move, or a move that would bankrupt me. For the third time in 13 years, I had placed everything I owned on the line, risking everything, in order to build a business.

A couple of years into this, I came up with a bright idea for a new kind of mud pump, a fundamentally necessary pump used on water well drill rigs. I spent my entire life savings to date (just $30,000.00), building a prototype of the pump and took it to the national water well convention to show it off. Customers immediately started coming out of the woodworks to buy the pumps, but there was a problem. I had depleted my assets making the prototype, and nobody would make me a business loan to start production of the new pumps. With several deposits for pump orders in hand, and nowhere to go, I finally started applying for as many credit card as I could find and took cash withdrawals on these cards to the tune of over $150,000.00 (including modest loans from my dear sister and brother), to get this 3rd business going.

Yes, once again, I had everything hanging over the line in an effort to start another business. I had never manufactured anything, and I had to design and bring into production a complex hydraulic machine from an untested prototype to a reliable production model (in six months). How many nights I lay awake wondering if I had just made the paramount mistake of my life I cannot tell you, but there were plenty. I managed to get the pumps into production, which immediately created another 2 full time jobs in East Texas. Some of the models in the first year suffered from quality issues due to the poor workmanship of one of my key suppliers, so I and an employee (another East Texan employed) had to drive across the country to repair customers’ pumps, practically from coast to coast. I stood behind the product, and made payments to all the credit cards that had financed me (and my brother and sister). I spent the next 5 years improving and refining the product, building a reputation for the pump and the company, working to get the pump into drill rig manufacturers’ product lines, and paying back credit cards. During all this time I continued to manage a growing water well business that was now operating 3 drill rig crews, and 2 well service crews. Also, the screen service business continued to grow. No government programs were there to help me, Mr. Obama, but that’s ok, I didn’t expect any, nor did I want any. I was too busy fighting to make success happen to sit around waiting for the government to help me.

Now, after manufacturing the mud pumps for 7 years, my combined businesses employ 32 full time employees, and distribute $5,000,000.00 annually through the local economy. Now, just 4 months ago I borrowed $1,254,000.00, purchasing computer controlled machining equipment to start my 4th business, a production machine shop. The machine shop will serve the mud pump company so that we can better manufacture our pumps that are being shipped worldwide. Of course, the machine shop will also do work for outside companies as well. This has already produced 2 more full time jobs, and 2 more should develop out of it in the next few months. This should work out, but if it doesn’t it will be because you, and the other professional politicians like yourself, will have destroyed our countrys’ (and the world) economy with your meddling with mortgage loan programs through your liberal manipulation and intimidation of loaning institutions to make sure that unqualified borrowers could get mortgages. You see, at the very time when I couldn’t get a business loan to get my mud pumps into production, you were working with Acorn and the Community Reinvestment Act programs to make sure that unqualified borrowers could buy homes with no down payment, and even no credit or worse yet, bad credit. Even the infamous, liberal, Ninja loans (No Income, No Job or Assets). While these unqualified borrowers were enjoying unrealistically low interest rates, I was paying 22% to 24% interest on the credit cards that I had used to provide me the funds for the mud pump business that has created jobs for more East Texans. It’s funny, because after 25 years of turning almost every dime of extra money back into my businesses to grow them, it has been only in the last two years that I have finally made enough money to be able to put a little away for retirement, and now the value of that has dropped 40% because of the policies you and your ilk have perpetrated on our country.

You see, Mr. Obama, I’m the guy you intend to raise taxes on. I’m the guy who has spent 25 years toiling and sweating, fretting and fighting, stressing and risking, to build a business and get ahead. I’m the guy who has been on the very edge of bankruptcy more than a dozen times over the last 25 years, and all the while creating more and more jobs for East Texans who didn’t want to take a risk, and would not demand from themselves what I have demanded from myself. I’m the guy you characterize as “the Americans who can afford it the most” that you believe should be taxed more to provide income redistribution “to spread the wealth” to those who have never toiled, sweated, fretted, fought, stressed, or risked anything. You want to characterize me as someone who has enjoyed a life of privilege and who needs to pay a higher percentage of my income than those who have bought into your entitlement culture. I resent you, Mr. Obama, as I resent all who want to use class warfare as a tool to advance their political career. What’s worse, each year more Americans buy into your liberal entitlement culture, and turn to the government for their hope of a better life instead of themselves. Liberals are succeeding through more than 40 years of collaborative effort between the predominant liberal media, and liberal indoctrination programs in the public school systems across our land.

What is so terribly sad about this is this. America was made great by people who embraced the one-time American culture of self reliance, self motivation, self determination, self discipline, personal betterment, hard work, risk taking. A culture built around the concept that success was in reach on every able bodied American who would strive for it. Each year that less Americans embrace that culture, we all descend together. We descend down the socialist path that has brought country after country ultimately to bitter and unremarkable states. If you and your liberal comrades in the media and school systems would spend half as much effort cultivating a culture of can-do across America as you do cultivating your entitlement culture, we could see Americans at large embracing the conviction that they can elevate themselves through personal betterment, personal achievement, and self reliance. You see, when people embrace such ideals, they act on them. When people act on such ideals, they succeed. All of America could find herself elevating instead of deteriorating. But that would eliminate the need for liberal politicians, wouldn’t it, Mr. Obama? The country would not need you if the country was convinced that problem solving was best left with individuals instead of the government. You and all your liberal comrades have got a vested interested in creating a dependent class in our country. It is the very business of liberals to create an ever expanding dependence on government. What’s remarkable is that you, who have never produced a job in your life, are going to tax me to take more of my money and give it to people who wouldn’t need my money if they would get off their entitlement mentality asses and apply themselves at work, demand more from themselves, and quit looking to liberal politicians to raise their station in life.

You see, I know because I’ve had them work for me before. Hundreds of them over these 25 years. People who simply will not show up to work on time. People who just will not work 5 days in a week, much less, 6 days. People always looking for a way to put less effort out. People who actually tell me that they would do more if I just would first pay them more. People who take off work to sit in government offices to apply to get free government handouts (gee, I wonder how things would have turned out for them if they had spent that time earning money and pleasing their employer?). You see, all of this comes from your entitlement mentality culture.

Oh, I know you will say I am uncompassionate. Sorry, Mr. Obama, wrong again. You see, I’ve seen what the average percentage of your income has been given to charities over the years of 2000 to 2004 (ignoring the years you started running for office - can you pronounce “politically motivated”), you averaged of less than 1% annually. And your running mate, Joe Biden, averaged less than ¼% of his annual income in charitable contributions over the last 10 years. Like so many liberals, the two of you want to give to the needy, just as long as it is someone else’s money you are giving to them. I won’t say what I have given to charities over the last 25 years, but the percentage is several times more than you or Joe Biden… combined (don’t you just hate google?). Tell me again how you feel my pain.

In short, Mr. Obama, your political philosophies represent everything that is wrong with our country. You represent the culture of government dependence instead of self reliance; Entitlement mentality instead of personal achievement; Penalization of the successful to reward the unmotivated; Political correctness instead of open mindedness and open debate. If you are successful, you may preside over the final transformation of America from being the greatest and most self-reliant culture on earth, to just another country of whiners and wimps, who sit around looking to the government to solve their problems. Like all of western Europe. All countries on the decline. All countries that, because of liberal socialistic mentalities, have a little less to offer mankind every year.

God help us…

Cory Miller
just a ordinary, extraordinary American, the way most Americans used to be.

P.S. Yes, Mr. Obama, I am a real American… meet me at: www.cmillerdrilling.com ; and: www.centerlinemanufacturing.com

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Linked at Fairly Conservative

A Final Thought About Conrad Black

Although we uppity rightists have moved on to our next legal outrage in Steyn and the BC Human Rights Tribunal, my thoughts have recently been turning to an older court-room debacle as its one-year anniversary approaches: the Conrad Black trial.

We certainly have our own problems in Canada but, as troubling as they are, I don't envy Americans their own legal headaches. As the Lord Black case eloquently demonstrated, the US justice system is absurdly weighted in favour of the prosecution. The system has forgotten what it once knew: that a man or woman charged with a crime is innocent until proven guilty. An atmosphere of unprincipled compromise has developed in the United States in which questions of innocence and guilt are subordinated to a process of haggling between jurors and attorneys. It has become truly ugly.

Say what you will about the Canadian Human Rights Commissions and the very serious threat they represent to freedom of speech, but at least our justice system remains true to that most fundamental tenet of civilized law: "innocent until proven guilty." For that we can be thankful and proud.

Also: Steven Skurka has a new book out called "Tilted: The Trial of Conrad Black." I'm still working my way through it but what I've read so far has been excellent. I would certainly recommend it to anybody interested in Lord Black, the Black trial, or the current witch hunt for business men and women who dare to turn a profit in the United States.