Doing What They Said

It should come as a surprise to no one that today's government is anti-business. They made that clear before the election of 2008. They were going to "clamp down" on wall street, regulate the banks, spread the wealth and not allow the "greed" that caused the crisis do any more harm.

Problem is, in the middle of a downturn, enough voters were seeing nothing but doom and gloom and actually bought into this message ... Howard Dean proclaimed that "capitalism has failed" (despite 200 years of evidence the contrary). The liberals won bigger than ever before. Now, what are the consequences of that election?

I just read an interesting interview with the CEO of Intel, Paul Otellini. Intel is the world's largest semiconductor company and remains a testament to the power of innovation combined with business savvy. Without Intel and the myriad of businesses that were either spun off, inspired, funded or made more efficient by it, the US and world economies would be much different. Dear reader, your standard of living is in no small measure higher thanks to Intel.

One year ago Intel had $11B cash in the bank. Today they have $18B. Why? Why is the ratio of cash to revenue the highest in history for the S&P 500? Because today's administration has said and done enough that is anti-business that fear of future taxes and regulations has paralyzed American businesses. They are not investing, expanding or hiring. They are sitting on their cash because they have reason to believe that the liberals will stick it to them again and again. The small companies that I help manage are doing the same thing.

Getting inside the head of liberals who think they can run the economy better than the business people is a theme of this blog. Runaway capitalism, monopolies, unfair business practices, inhumane working conditions and overpaid executives are just some of the reasons liberals use to explain their policies. We must regulate tightly and keep a close watch on business or they will start doing more harm than good.

Read the article with the new health care law in mind. With the new Dodd-Frank financial reform law in mind. With the fact that almost none of President Obama's staff has ever worked in the private sector in mind. It starts to become clear why we have 10% unemployment and some economists are saying "Get used to it".

Is it possible that liberals actually want to handicap companies so that growth slows? This would reduce suburban sprawl, pollution, consumption of resources and globalization. Is this the hidden agenda? Turn the clock back to pre-industrial, agrarian times with a smaller world population?

Or do they just simply not appreciate the power and value of capitalism? Have they not witnessed the last 200 years of American exceptionalism? Have they not seen the data tightly correlating the level of economic freedom in a given country to its quality of life? Do they still think that Karl Marx was right?

I don't know. But I do know that they're very clear about their intentions and they continue to deliver on what they promise.