Obama and economic fascism

Jerry Doyle:

... economic fascism has a precise, defined meaning. And Barack Obama’s economic policy fulfills that meaning in every conceivable way.

Economic fascism can be defined as government control over the four P’s: Product, Price, Profit Margin, and People. When the government controls the product created by the market, when it controls the price structure for product and company securities, when it controls how much profit particular companies can make, and when it controls the people who are hired and fired, economic freedom has been banished, and economic fascism reigns supreme.

And economic fascism reigns supreme in Barack Obama’s America. Just look at the recent government handling of Chrysler. In a series of press conferences this week announcing Chrysler’s bankruptcy, Obama hit on all of the four P’s.

First, Obama stated that Chrysler’s product had to be revamped -- and that he knew how best to do it. “For too long,” Obama said, “Chrysler moved too slowly to adapt to the future, designing and building cars that were less popular, less reliable, and less fuel efficient than foreign competitors. That’s part of what has brought us to a point where they sought taxpayer assistance.” It’s easy for Obama to criticize Chrysler -- he’s never run so much as a lemonade stand. He’s never had to produce a product for the market. And his ideas are routinely foolish: his first brilliant automotive move was touting the GM/Segway two-wheel idiotmobile, designed to navigate through traffic.

And yet Obama wants control of the car industry. “I'm not an auto engineer,” Obama admitted on Wednesday. “I don't know how to create an affordable, well-designed plug-in hybrid. But I know that, if the Japanese can design an affordable, well-designed hybrid, then, doggone it, the American people should be able to do the same. So my job is to ask the auto industry: Why is it you guys can't do this?” Why is it his job to ask that question? Shouldn’t the market be asking that question? Not in an economically fascist state, where the government controls the product.

Second, Obama announced that he would be setting prices on senior debt. Obama’s proposed plan for Chrysler involved destroying senior debtholders, paying them a whopping $0.33 on the dollar for their loans. When the senior debtholders refused to abide by such a plan, Obama excluded them from the Chrysler bankruptcy negotiations altogether, then labeled them “speculators” and blamed them for Chrysler’s downfall -- all the while kowtowing to the interests of four large banks (Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley) that own 70 percent of Chryslers debt. All of them have taken government bailout cash.

The lenders who have not taken government cash, by contrast, were left out in the cold. “We have been forced to communicate through an obviously conflicted intermediary: a group of banks that have received billions of TARP funds," the lenders wrote in a press release. “In its earnest effort to ensure the survival of Chrysler and the well-being of the company's employees, the government has risked overturning the rule of law.” There is no risk of overturning the rule of law -- the rule of law has already been overturned. And Obama celebrates the death of the rule of law, dancing on the corpses of the “speculators.” The “speculators,” announced Obama “were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to make none … I don’t stand with them. I stand with Chrysler’s employees, and their families and communities.”

Posing as a populist, Obama undermined the very basis of free enterprise in this country: the power of investors to lend money at return. Instead, he says he stands with employees, families, and communities -- all of whom would be bankrupt without the power of private investment. Preaching economic fascism in the guise of warfare on “speculators” -- this is how freedom dies.

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There is much more.

I have often said that what Obama is doing is worse than socialism. The socialist owns the means of production and is responsible for its profits and losses. What Obama is doing is controlling the means of production without taking responsibility for the consequences of his manipulations.

However just putting a label on his means of destroying the free enterprise economy is not enough. We have to explain why his doing so will damage the economy for all of us. A label without explanation is just name calling, and it will not persuade by itself. The revival of liberal fascism is a threat to freedom that needs to be understood.