A Gut Check We Need

This morning as I was perusing different business websites and I came upon this article “11 Reasons America’s a New Socialist Economy” from Paul Farrell of MarketWatch. It’s a pretty harsh look at what he believes conservatives have done to this economy. Paul looks back at the birthplace of conservative economic ideology, Nobel economist Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom,” and talks about how we, the government, business leaders, consumers and politicians, dropped the ball on economic freedom and turned our economy into a socialist economy. It’s far reaching but echoes sentiments lead by Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky in last week’s Bernanke testimony. As you may recall, Bunning stole the show when he said the following to Bernanke:

“[T]he Fed is asking for more power. But the Fed has proven they can not be trusted with the power they have. They get it wrong, do not use it, or stretch it further than it was ever supposed to go. As I said a moment ago, their monetary policy is a leading cause of the mess we are in…

“Now the Fed wants to be the systemic risk regulator. But the Fed is the systemic risk. Giving the Fed more power is like giving the neighborhood kid who broke your window playing baseball in the street a bigger bat and thinking that will fix the problem. I am not going to go along with that and will use all my powers as a Senator to stop any new powers going to the Fed.

“Instead, we should give them less to do so they can do it right, either by taking away their monetary policy responsibility or by requiring them to focus only on inflation…

“[L]et me say a few words about the GSE bailout plan. When I picked up my newspaper yesterday, I thought I woke up in France. But no, it turns out socialism is alive and well in America. The Treasury Secretary is asking for a blank check to buy as much Fannie and Freddie debt or equity as he wants. The Fed’s purchase of Bear Stearns’ assets was amateur socialism compared to this.”

Check out Farrell’s piece. It’s raw and may be the kind of gut check we deserve.