Free Republic

Imagine that some hypothetical enemy state spent years preparing a "Manchurian Candidate" to destroy the U.S. economy once elected. What policies might that leader pursue? He might discourage private capital from entering the financial sector by instructing his Treasury secretary to repeatedly promise a brilliant rescue plan, but never actually have one. Private firms, spooked by the thought of what government might do, would shy away from transactions altogether. If the secretary were smooth and played rope-a-dope long enough, the whole financial sector would be gone before voters could demand action.

So let me do the preachers of Armageddon one better. Today's stock market isn't just the “worst since the Great Depression,” like they're so fond of saying. No, it's even worse than the Great Depression. Take a look at the chart, below. It shows the daily progress of the S&P 500 in terms of percentage change from the very top. The brown line is the change from the recent all-time highs on October 9, 2007. The blue line is the change from the all-time highs just before the Great Depression, September 6, 1929. As of yesterday's close (Thursday, March 5),...

The Dow is sinking and Obama's budget is a disaster. But despite dire trends, free markets will prevail. Officially, President Obama's $3.6 trillion budget is titled "A New Era of Responsibility." That's false on two counts. It's an era = not of responsibility, but of big-government taxation, spending, and regulation. And it's not new. History is full of attempts to inflate the state to grow the economy. Virtually all have ended badly. As Monday's sell-off reminds us, Wall Street's verdict on Obamanomics has been quick and sharp. To help pay for this, Obama proposes the largest tax increase in history....

Liberals are continuing their assault on investors, traders and the stock market. Peter DeFazio introduced the Let Wall Street Pay for Wall Street’s Bailout Act of 2009 bill in another utterly audacious attempt to stifle private enterprise. What is especially sad, the purpose of this bill as officially stated is to pay for TARP! TARP was shoved down our throats by the liberals, largely rejected by the GOP and force fed to the American public. This bill was introduced several weeks ago, but I am just learning about it now and someone that participates in the market find this to...