Sunday, December 11, 2011

Re: Gingrich: Close Ties To Nancy Pelosi

I also agree with a possible GSE based, type of format for space exploration.....Especially compared to the Socialist-Elitist Democrats who have foregone ANY space exploration, and have left that to the Chinese and Russians.

From a free market standpoint, there is a gamut of wealth to be found in space exploration, from minerals, to just the tourism aspect, and this is only short term visions...

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Keith In Tampa <keithintampa@gmail.com> wrote:

Good Morning Bruce,

I suggest you read the whole interview, and understand Gingrich's thinking and observation, which I totally agree with:

   http://web.archive.org/web/20080909224217/http://www.freddiemac.com/corporate/about/policy/policytalk_gingrich_42407.html

A GSE can serve a purpose, and the whole structure of Fannie and Freddie were good ideas, but were totally abused, possibly with good intentions, but nevertheless it was socialist Democrats that took Fannie and Freddie and (probably for profit in the case of Frank, Pelosi, Raines and Dodd) nevertheless took a government backed program which was designed for first time home owners and/or lower socio-economic individuals who had saved their money and could qualify for home ownership.   The Socialist Democrats, despite the Republicans warnings, (including Gingrich!) literally lowered all standards, thereby totally wreaking havoc on not only the American economy, but the global economy.

Back to Newt Gingrich,   again, I believe in the concept of GSE's. A number of the VA programs, the Crysler Bailout, as well as other significant programs have worked well. It is when these programs become socialist boondoggles and for whatever reason this is allowed to happen, where we run into trouble. The Federal Government cannot maintain and support 300 million people!

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 11:36 AM, Bruce Majors <majors.bruce@gmail.com> wrote:

Reason #1 why Newt Gingrich is a little bit frightening
by RUSS ROBERTS on DECEMBER 8, 2011

in HOUSING, POLITICS

By the title, I don't mean the most important reason. Not sure what that is. This is just the first reason I'm listing. Maybe I'll list more. And it turns out this reason is multi-faceted.

Reason #1 comes from a blog post by Josh Barro who digs up this interview with Gingrich. It's not exactly an interview. It was conducted by Freddie Mac (whatever that means) and posted on Freddie Mac's website.

There are many things that are frightening about Gingrich's remarks. First, they are for Freddie Mac who paid him something around $1.6 million for his "services." He described this work originally as being payment for his historical knowledge of housing. Cue laughter, folks. This interview gives you a glimpse of the real reason he was hired. He was hired, of course, to provide cover for Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac was a GSE, a government-sponsored enterprise. A GSE was quasi-private or quasi-public, take your pick. Freddie (and Fannie Mae) bought mortgages from originators and brokers. They provided "liquidity" for the housing market which is a fancy way of saying that they increased the amount of credit available. For a long while, they were relatively benign.

Because they were thought to had an implicit guarantee of government support, they were able to issue bonds at relatively low rates of interest. They were very eager to use that money to buy more mortgages. The problem was that because of that implicit guarantee, they were constrained by regulation to only buy fairly safe mortgages with 20% downpayments. Starting in the mid-1990′s, Clinton (and then Bush) required them to relax their standards. They didn't end up buying a lot of sub-prime, just a lot of low down-payment mortgages that were very prone to end up underwater if housing prices ever fell. This injection of credit into the market pushed up the price of housing (starting around 1995) launched the housing bubble and along with other government programs, helped make speculative subprime lending.

The alternative view is the animal spirits view that suddenly, around 1995, people began to believe that housing was a particularly good investment. But for this discussion, the cause of the bubble is irrelevant. The important point is that Freddie and Fannie began to make increasingly risky loans, encouraged by their regulators. (See Figures 6,7, and 8, here.) A number of economists on the left and right began to worry that the taxpayer might end up on the hook for those loans if they ever blew up. They did blow up. The bill is $150 billion and counting. But because political pressure began to build against Freddie and Fannie, they pushed back. They hired people on the left (Stiglitz and the Orszags) to do research showing how safe the GSE's were. And they hired people on the right like Newt Gingrich who could claim conservative credentials and a really good Rolodex to reduce the pressure to reign in Freddie and Fannie.

So the first frightening thing about Newt is that he worked for Freddie Mac at all. The second frightening thing is that he lied about it, pretending it was some sort of research position. But the really frightening thing is what he actually said in the name of making people feel good about these so-called government-sponsored entreprises which led to private gains and socialized losses. The worst kind of cronyism.

Read the whole "interview." It's short and you gives you a flavor of how Gingrich invoked conservative rhetoric to support Freddie Mac politically. But the highlight for me is this part:

Q: A key element of the entrepreneurial model is using the private sector where possible to save taxpayer dollars and improve efficiency. And you believe the GSE model provides one way to use the private sector.

Gingrich: Some activities of government – trash collection is a good example – can be efficiently contracted out to the private sector. Other functions – the military, police and fire protection – obviously must remain within government. And then there are areas in which a public purpose would be best achieved by using market-based models. I think GSEs provide one of those models. I like the GSE model because it provides a more efficient, market-based alternative to taxpayer-funded government programs. It marries private enterprise to a public purpose. We obviously don't want to use GSEs for everything, but there are times when private enterprise alone is not sufficient to achieve a public purpose. I think private enterprise alone is not going to be able to help the Gulf region recover from the hurricanes, and government will not get the job done in a very effective or efficient manner. We should be looking seriously at creating a GSE to help redevelop this region. We should be looking at whether and how the GSE model could help us address the problem of financing health care. I think a GSE for space exploration ought to be seriously considered – I'm convinced that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today.

Gingrich says that the GSE model "marries private enterprise to a public purpose." What we have learned is that that doesn't work very well. But that's not the most frightening part of the quote. And the most frightening part isn't that this "interview" took place in April of 2007, when Freddie and Fannie were totally out of control, lending out money to buyers putting less than 5% down in record numbers, money that would not return as expected.

No, the really frightening part of this interview is the last part, when Newt goes off the deep end and says something grandiose, meaningless, and frightening:

I think a GSE for space exploration ought to be seriously considered – I'm convinced that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today.

What could that possibly mean, a GSE for space exploration? I think what he means is that it would be nice to have some incentives at NASA. How would that work? What is the GSE equivalent of Freddie Mac for NASA? It would be an agency that would buy up loans to fund space travel? No, that doesn't make any sense. But the truth is, I have no idea how to make sense of it. And then the part where he's "convinced, that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today." Convinced? How do you convince yourself of something like that? And what does he mean by "be on Mars today." We've already sent probes to Mars. We just sent another one the other day. I assume he means a person. Maybe he means the interviewer and himself. Probably not. But who knows? And why would "being on Mars" be a good thing? Wouldn't it be incredibly expensive whether it was done by NASA or a NASA GSE? Is that a good goal? Why?

123 Comments

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 10:50 AM, Keith In Tampa <keithintampa@gmail.com> wrote:

Pelosi "Lied"..."Despicable"..."Dishonest"....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOwhYLIyYhg

"The Dumbest Single Thing I've Ever Done"

11/8/11: Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says his ad with Nancy Pelosi on global warming for Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection was the "dumbest single thing I've done in years," then says, "I actually don't know whether global warming is occurring."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp1xkAKKeNM

Gingrich Dismantles Pelosi's "Liberal Math" On Food Stamps

http://www.youtube.com/user/AmericanSolutions?blend=22&ob=5

Newt Gingrich Calls for Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Resign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES58n3dtpAY

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Re: Gingrich: Close Ties To Nancy Pelosi

Good Morning Bruce,

I suggest you read the whole interview, and understand Gingrich's thinking and observation, which I totally agree with:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080909224217/http://www.freddiemac.com/corporate/about/policy/policytalk_gingrich_42407.html

A GSE can serve a purpose, and the whole structure of Fannie and Freddie were good ideas, but were totally abused, possibly with good intentions, but nevertheless it was socialist Democrats that took Fannie and Freddie and (probably for profit in the case of Frank, Pelosi, Raines and Dodd) nevertheless took a government backed program which was designed for first time home owners and/or lower socio-economic individuals who had saved their money and could qualify for home ownership. The Socialist Democrats, despite the Republicans warnings, (including Gingrich!) literally lowered all standards, thereby totally wreaking havoc on not only the American economy, but the global economy.

Back to Newt Gingrich, again, I believe in the concept of GSE's. A number of the VA programs, the Crysler Bailout, as well as other significant programs have worked well. It is when these programs become socialist boondoggles and for whatever reason this is allowed to happen, where we run into trouble. The Federal Government cannot maintain and support 300 million people!

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 11:36 AM, Bruce Majors <majors.bruce@gmail.com> wrote:

Reason #1 why Newt Gingrich is a little bit frightening
by RUSS ROBERTS on DECEMBER 8, 2011

in HOUSING, POLITICS

By the title, I don't mean the most important reason. Not sure what that is. This is just the first reason I'm listing. Maybe I'll list more. And it turns out this reason is multi-faceted.

Reason #1 comes from a blog post by Josh Barro who digs up this interview with Gingrich. It's not exactly an interview. It was conducted by Freddie Mac (whatever that means) and posted on Freddie Mac's website.

There are many things that are frightening about Gingrich's remarks. First, they are for Freddie Mac who paid him something around $1.6 million for his "services." He described this work originally as being payment for his historical knowledge of housing. Cue laughter, folks. This interview gives you a glimpse of the real reason he was hired. He was hired, of course, to provide cover for Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac was a GSE, a government-sponsored enterprise. A GSE was quasi-private or quasi-public, take your pick. Freddie (and Fannie Mae) bought mortgages from originators and brokers. They provided "liquidity" for the housing market which is a fancy way of saying that they increased the amount of credit available. For a long while, they were relatively benign.

Because they were thought to had an implicit guarantee of government support, they were able to issue bonds at relatively low rates of interest. They were very eager to use that money to buy more mortgages. The problem was that because of that implicit guarantee, they were constrained by regulation to only buy fairly safe mortgages with 20% downpayments. Starting in the mid-1990′s, Clinton (and then Bush) required them to relax their standards. They didn't end up buying a lot of sub-prime, just a lot of low down-payment mortgages that were very prone to end up underwater if housing prices ever fell. This injection of credit into the market pushed up the price of housing (starting around 1995) launched the housing bubble and along with other government programs, helped make speculative subprime lending.

The alternative view is the animal spirits view that suddenly, around 1995, people began to believe that housing was a particularly good investment. But for this discussion, the cause of the bubble is irrelevant. The important point is that Freddie and Fannie began to make increasingly risky loans, encouraged by their regulators. (See Figures 6,7, and 8, here.) A number of economists on the left and right began to worry that the taxpayer might end up on the hook for those loans if they ever blew up. They did blow up. The bill is $150 billion and counting. But because political pressure began to build against Freddie and Fannie, they pushed back. They hired people on the left (Stiglitz and the Orszags) to do research showing how safe the GSE's were. And they hired people on the right like Newt Gingrich who could claim conservative credentials and a really good Rolodex to reduce the pressure to reign in Freddie and Fannie.

So the first frightening thing about Newt is that he worked for Freddie Mac at all. The second frightening thing is that he lied about it, pretending it was some sort of research position. But the really frightening thing is what he actually said in the name of making people feel good about these so-called government-sponsored entreprises which led to private gains and socialized losses. The worst kind of cronyism.

Read the whole "interview." It's short and you gives you a flavor of how Gingrich invoked conservative rhetoric to support Freddie Mac politically. But the highlight for me is this part:

Q: A key element of the entrepreneurial model is using the private sector where possible to save taxpayer dollars and improve efficiency. And you believe the GSE model provides one way to use the private sector.

Gingrich: Some activities of government – trash collection is a good example – can be efficiently contracted out to the private sector. Other functions – the military, police and fire protection – obviously must remain within government. And then there are areas in which a public purpose would be best achieved by using market-based models. I think GSEs provide one of those models. I like the GSE model because it provides a more efficient, market-based alternative to taxpayer-funded government programs. It marries private enterprise to a public purpose. We obviously don't want to use GSEs for everything, but there are times when private enterprise alone is not sufficient to achieve a public purpose. I think private enterprise alone is not going to be able to help the Gulf region recover from the hurricanes, and government will not get the job done in a very effective or efficient manner. We should be looking seriously at creating a GSE to help redevelop this region. We should be looking at whether and how the GSE model could help us address the problem of financing health care. I think a GSE for space exploration ought to be seriously considered – I'm convinced that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today.

Gingrich says that the GSE model "marries private enterprise to a public purpose." What we have learned is that that doesn't work very well. But that's not the most frightening part of the quote. And the most frightening part isn't that this "interview" took place in April of 2007, when Freddie and Fannie were totally out of control, lending out money to buyers putting less than 5% down in record numbers, money that would not return as expected.

No, the really frightening part of this interview is the last part, when Newt goes off the deep end and says something grandiose, meaningless, and frightening:

I think a GSE for space exploration ought to be seriously considered – I'm convinced that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today.

What could that possibly mean, a GSE for space exploration? I think what he means is that it would be nice to have some incentives at NASA. How would that work? What is the GSE equivalent of Freddie Mac for NASA? It would be an agency that would buy up loans to fund space travel? No, that doesn't make any sense. But the truth is, I have no idea how to make sense of it. And then the part where he's "convinced, that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today." Convinced? How do you convince yourself of something like that? And what does he mean by "be on Mars today." We've already sent probes to Mars. We just sent another one the other day. I assume he means a person. Maybe he means the interviewer and himself. Probably not. But who knows? And why would "being on Mars" be a good thing? Wouldn't it be incredibly expensive whether it was done by NASA or a NASA GSE? Is that a good goal? Why?

123 Comments

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 10:50 AM, Keith In Tampa <keithintampa@gmail.com> wrote:

Pelosi "Lied"..."Despicable"..."Dishonest"....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOwhYLIyYhg

"The Dumbest Single Thing I've Ever Done"

11/8/11: Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says his ad with Nancy Pelosi on global warming for Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection was the "dumbest single thing I've done in years," then says, "I actually don't know whether global warming is occurring."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp1xkAKKeNM

Gingrich Dismantles Pelosi's "Liberal Math" On Food Stamps

http://www.youtube.com/user/AmericanSolutions?blend=22&ob=5

Newt Gingrich Calls for Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Resign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES58n3dtpAY

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Re: Gingrich: Close Ties To Nancy Pelosi

Reason #1 why Newt Gingrich is a little bit frightening

by RUSS ROBERTS on DECEMBER 8, 2011

in HOUSING, POLITICS

By the title, I don't mean the most important reason. Not sure what that is. This is just the first reason I'm listing. Maybe I'll list more. And it turns out this reason is multi-faceted.

Reason #1 comes from a blog post by Josh Barro who digs up this interview with Gingrich. It's not exactly an interview. It was conducted by Freddie Mac (whatever that means) and posted on Freddie Mac's website.

There are many things that are frightening about Gingrich's remarks. First, they are for Freddie Mac who paid him something around $1.6 million for his "services." He described this work originally as being payment for his historical knowledge of housing. Cue laughter, folks. This interview gives you a glimpse of the real reason he was hired. He was hired, of course, to provide cover for Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac was a GSE, a government-sponsored enterprise. A GSE was quasi-private or quasi-public, take your pick. Freddie (and Fannie Mae) bought mortgages from originators and brokers. They provided "liquidity" for the housing market which is a fancy way of saying that they increased the amount of credit available. For a long while, they were relatively benign.

Because they were thought to had an implicit guarantee of government support, they were able to issue bonds at relatively low rates of interest. They were very eager to use that money to buy more mortgages. The problem was that because of that implicit guarantee, they were constrained by regulation to only buy fairly safe mortgages with 20% downpayments. Starting in the mid-1990′s, Clinton (and then Bush) required them to relax their standards. They didn't end up buying a lot of sub-prime, just a lot of low down-payment mortgages that were very prone to end up underwater if housing prices ever fell. This injection of credit into the market pushed up the price of housing (starting around 1995) launched the housing bubble and along with other government programs, helped make speculative subprime lending.

The alternative view is the animal spirits view that suddenly, around 1995, people began to believe that housing was a particularly good investment. But for this discussion, the cause of the bubble is irrelevant. The important point is that Freddie and Fannie began to make increasingly risky loans, encouraged by their regulators. (See Figures 6,7, and 8, here.) A number of economists on the left and right began to worry that the taxpayer might end up on the hook for those loans if they ever blew up. They did blow up. The bill is $150 billion and counting. But because political pressure began to build against Freddie and Fannie, they pushed back. They hired people on the left (Stiglitz and the Orszags) to do research showing how safe the GSE's were. And they hired people on the right like Newt Gingrich who could claim conservative credentials and a really good Rolodex to reduce the pressure to reign in Freddie and Fannie.

So the first frightening thing about Newt is that he worked for Freddie Mac at all. The second frightening thing is that he lied about it, pretending it was some sort of research position. But the really frightening thing is what he actually said in the name of making people feel good about these so-called government-sponsored entreprises which led to private gains and socialized losses. The worst kind of cronyism.

Read the whole "interview." It's short and you gives you a flavor of how Gingrich invoked conservative rhetoric to support Freddie Mac politically. But the highlight for me is this part:

Q: A key element of the entrepreneurial model is using the private sector where possible to save taxpayer dollars and improve efficiency. And you believe the GSE model provides one way to use the private sector.

Gingrich: Some activities of government – trash collection is a good example – can be efficiently contracted out to the private sector. Other functions – the military, police and fire protection – obviously must remain within government. And then there are areas in which a public purpose would be best achieved by using market-based models. I think GSEs provide one of those models. I like the GSE model because it provides a more efficient, market-based alternative to taxpayer-funded government programs. It marries private enterprise to a public purpose. We obviously don't want to use GSEs for everything, but there are times when private enterprise alone is not sufficient to achieve a public purpose. I think private enterprise alone is not going to be able to help the Gulf region recover from the hurricanes, and government will not get the job done in a very effective or efficient manner. We should be looking seriously at creating a GSE to help redevelop this region. We should be looking at whether and how the GSE model could help us address the problem of financing health care. I think a GSE for space exploration ought to be seriously considered – I'm convinced that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today.

Gingrich says that the GSE model "marries private enterprise to a public purpose." What we have learned is that that doesn't work very well. But that's not the most frightening part of the quote. And the most frightening part isn't that this "interview" took place in April of 2007, when Freddie and Fannie were totally out of control, lending out money to buyers putting less than 5% down in record numbers, money that would not return as expected.

No, the really frightening part of this interview is the last part, when Newt goes off the deep end and says something grandiose, meaningless, and frightening:

I think a GSE for space exploration ought to be seriously considered – I'm convinced that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today.

What could that possibly mean, a GSE for space exploration? I think what he means is that it would be nice to have some incentives at NASA. How would that work? What is the GSE equivalent of Freddie Mac for NASA? It would be an agency that would buy up loans to fund space travel? No, that doesn't make any sense. But the truth is, I have no idea how to make sense of it. And then the part where he's "convinced, that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today." Convinced? How do you convince yourself of something like that? And what does he mean by "be on Mars today." We've already sent probes to Mars. We just sent another one the other day. I assume he means a person. Maybe he means the interviewer and himself. Probably not. But who knows? And why would "being on Mars" be a good thing? Wouldn't it be incredibly expensive whether it was done by NASA or a NASA GSE? Is that a good goal? Why?

123 Comments

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 10:50 AM, Keith In Tampa <keithintampa@gmail.com> wrote:

Pelosi "Lied"..."Despicable"..."Dishonest"....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOwhYLIyYhg

"The Dumbest Single Thing I've Ever Done"

11/8/11: Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says his ad with Nancy Pelosi on global warming for Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection was the "dumbest single thing I've done in years," then says, "I actually don't know whether global warming is occurring."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp1xkAKKeNM

Gingrich Dismantles Pelosi's "Liberal Math" On Food Stamps

http://www.youtube.com/user/AmericanSolutions?blend=22&ob=5

Newt Gingrich Calls for Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Resign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES58n3dtpAY

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JP Daily Quran and Hadith

THE NAME OF "ALLAH"
Assalamu'alaikum Wa Rahmatullah e Wa Barakatuhu,

Want your guideness regarding this Hadess can you provide me the refrence of this . in which volume it is?

Thanks & Best regards,

Imran Ilyas
Cell: 00971509483403

****People oppose things because they are ignorant of them****

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Gingrich: Close Ties To Nancy Pelosi

Pelosi "Lied"..."Despicable"..."Dishonest"....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOwhYLIyYhg

"The Dumbest Single Thing I've Ever Done"

11/8/11: Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says his ad with Nancy Pelosi on global warming for Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection was the "dumbest single thing I've done in years," then says, "I actually don't know whether global warming is occurring."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp1xkAKKeNM

Gingrich Dismantles Pelosi's "Liberal Math" On Food Stamps

http://www.youtube.com/user/AmericanSolutions?blend=22&ob=5

Newt Gingrich Calls for Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Resign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES58n3dtpAY

Pics and toons 12/10/11 (4)

What ESPN Didn’t Show You

New post on Fellowship of the Minds

What ESPN Didn't Show You

by Dr. Eowyn

On the night of November 14, 2011, the Green Bay Packers played against the Minnesota Vikings in Lambeau Field, Wisconsin. The ESPN cameras were there to record the football game.

Strangely, ESPN failed to show you this:

H/t beloved fellow Tina.

~Eowyn

Dr. Eowyn | December 11, 2011 at 4:44 am | Tags: Lambeau Field, military, Packers-Vikings game, patriotism, veterans | Categories: Culture War, Media, Military, United States | URL: http://wp.me/pKuKY-b7M

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Schiff: Obama Says Free Markets Never Work

Obama Says Free Markets Never Work

Peter Schiff

December 10, 2011

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/peterschiff/2011/12/11/obama_says_free_markets_never_work/page/full/

For most of his time as a national political figure, Barack Obama has been careful to cloak his core socialist leanings behind a veil of pro-capitalist rhetoric. This makes strategic sense, as Americans still largely identify as pro-capitalist. However, based on his recent speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, the President appears to have reassessed the political landscape in advance of the 2012 elections. Based on the growth of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the recent defeat of Republicans in special elections, he has perhaps sensed a surge of left-leaning sentiment; and, as a result, he finally dropped the pretense.

According to our President's new view of history, capitalism is a theory that has "never worked." He argues that its appeal can't be justified by results, but its popularity is based on Americans' preference for an economic ideology that "fits well on a bumper sticker." He feels that capitalism speaks to the flaws in the American DNA, those deeply rooted creation myths that elevate the achievements of individuals and cast unwarranted skepticism on the benefits of government. He argues that this pre-disposition has been exploited by the rich to popularize policies that benefit themselves at the expense of the poor and middle class.

But Obama's knowledge of history is limited to what is written on his teleprompter. And his selection of the same location that Teddy Roosevelt used to chart an abrupt departure into populist politics is deeply symbolic in the opposite way to that which he intended. It is not by some genetic fluke that Americans distrust government. It is an integral and essential part of our heritage. The United States was founded by people who distrusted government intensely and was subsequently settled, over successive generations, by people fleeing the ravages of government oppression. These Americans relied on capitalism to quickly build the greatest economic power the world had ever seen - from nothing.

But according to Obama's revisionist version of American history, we tried capitalism only briefly during our history. First, during the Robber Barron period of the late 19th Century, the result of which was child labor and unprecedented lower-class poverty. These ravages were supposedly only corrected by the progressive policies of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. We tried capitalism again in the 1920s, according to Obama, and the result was the Great Depression. This time, it allegedly took FDR's New Deal to finally slay that capitalist monster. Then, the account only gets more farcical. Apparently, we tried capitalism again under George W. Bush, and the result was the housing bubble, financial crisis, and ensuing Great Recession. Obama now argues that government is needed once again to save the day.

This view is complete fiction and proves that Obama is not qualified to teach elementary school civics, let alone serve as President of the United States. I wonder what other economic system he believes we followed prior to the 1890s and 1920s (and during the 1950s and 1960s) that that he now seeks to restore? Capitalism did not start with J.P. Morgan in 1890s or John D. Rockefeller in the 1920s as the President suggests. In fact, it was about that time that capitalism came under attack by the progressives. We were born and prospered under capitalism. The Great Depression did not result from unbridled capitalism, but from the monetary policy of the newly created Federal Reserve and the interventionist economic policies of both Hoover and Roosevelt - policies that were decidedly un-capitalist.

The prosperity enjoyed during mid-20th century actually resulted from the incredible progress produced by years of capitalism. Contrary to Obama's belief, the New Deal and Great Society did not create the middle class; it was, in fact, a direct result of the capitalist industrial revolution. The socialist programs of which Obama is so fond are the reasons why the middle class has been shrinking. America's economic descent began in the 1960s, when we abandoned capitalism in favor of a mixed economy. By mixing capitalism with socialism, we undermined economic growth, and reversed much of the progress years of laissez-faire had bestowed on average Americans. The back of the middle class is being broken by the weight of government and the enormous burden taxes and regulation place on the economy.

America's first experiment with socialism, the Plymouth Bay Colony, ended in failure, and our most successful colonies - New York, Virginia, Massachusetts - were begun primarily as commercial enterprises. When the founding fathers gathered to write the Constitution, they represented capitalist states and granted the federal government severely limited powers.

Apparently, Obama thinks our founders' mistrust of government was delusional, and that we were fortunate that far wiser groups of leaders eventually corrected those mistakes. The danger, as Obama sees it, is that some Republicans actually want to reverse course and adopt the failed ideas espoused by great American fools like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin.

The President unknowingly illustrated his own contradictory thinking with the importance he now places on extending the temporary payroll tax cuts. If all that stands between middle-class families and abject poverty is a small tax cut, imagine how much damage the far more massive existing tax burden already inflicts on those very households! If Obama really wants to relieve middle-class taxpayers of this burden, he needs to reduce the cost of government by cutting spending. After all, there is no way to pay for all the government programs Obama wants by simply by taxing the rich.

History has proven time-and-again that capitalism works and socialism does not. Taking money from the rich and redistributing it to the poor does not grow the economy. On the contrary, it reduces the incentives of both parties. It lowers savings, destroys capital, limits economic growth, and lowers living standards. Maybe Obama should take his eyes off the teleprompter long enough to read some American history. In fact, he could start by reading the Constitution that he swore an oath to uphold.