Free Republic

On the Friday before Christmas, President Obama announced that he was appointing Mohamed A. El-Erian, the CEO of Pacific Investment Management Company, as the chairman of his Global Development Council. The announcement didn’t get much attention, but it should. It exemplifies what’s wrong with Obama’s approach to economic policy, which amounts to: insult rich people as “fat cats,” raise their taxes, and then choose a favored few of them for special access. If you’re not familiar with El-Erian, you must not be watching CNBC or attending the World Economic Forum at Davos. The son of an Egyptian ambassador to France...

Policy-wise, this is an oldie but a goodie, I guess, even though we’re still spending tons of money on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae more than four years after the crash. Wells Fargo CEO Robert Kovacevich can't believe that we haven't learned the lesson from 2008 and gotten the government out of the home mortgage industry, and tells CNBC's Squawk Box that the two organizations made that crash exponentially worse than it needed to be: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exacerbated the 2008 mortgage crisis, and that’s why the U.S. government should get out...

A Travel Channel episode of No Reservations, [..], took viewers to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I had heard that the show offered unique insight into the country and its troubles. I couldn't imagine how. But it turns out to be true. Through the lens of food, we can gain an insight into culture, and from culture to economy, and from economy to politics and finally to what's wrong in this country and what can be done about it. Through this micro lens, we gain more insight than we would have if the program were entirely focused on economic issues. Such an episode...

New York's Gabriel Sherman reports that Fox News is scaling back airtime for Republican pundit Karl Rove, in what appears to be a reprimand for Rove's meltdown during the network's live election broadcast. Sources told Sherman that Fox News chief Roger Ailes has ordered his staff to bench Rove and his fellow GOP pundit Dick Morris, two of the network's most vocal partisan voices whose predictions turned out to be spectacularly wrong. According to Sherman, producers must now get permission before booking Rove or Morris on Fox shows. The move comes as Fox takes steps to rehab its image in the wake...

Two years ago, when President Obama visited the LG Chem battery plant in Holland, it was hailed as part of the transformation of Michigan to a “green economy.” The battery plant, which supplies batteries for the Chevy Volt, got $151 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. Today, $133 million of that $151 million has been spent, but since April, the company's 200 workers have been on "rolling furloughs" because the electric vehicle market has failed to blossom as promised by many. In 2010, the plant was projected to create 443 new jobs within five years. Those projections have been...

The Obama administration is famous for its crony capitalism. It’s famous for wasting money on disastrous investments like Solyndra to pay off its political allies. It now appears, however, that they go a step further: they put public funds in bad investment loans, then double down on their bad loans with free cash grants.

Children used to have aspirations to achieve greatness in the private sector. But what are they learning now? Watch this video at Fox Nation and click "Fire it up!" on the top left if you really like it.

This chapter looks at the Spanish company Abengoa that received more than $2.8 billion in loans and grants—making them the second largest recipient of the $16 billion doled out through the DOE 1705 loan guarantee program. From the introduction of this serialized book, the thumbnail says: Abengoa has two solar projects: Solana and Mojave Solar. Solana’s Fitch rating is BB+. Just before Christmas, 2010, the company received $1.45 billion from the DOE for a solar thermal plant, to use parabolic trough technology in Gila Bend, AZ. Mojave Solar’s rating was BB. Yet the company received $1.2 billion in September 2011...

Solyndra’s CEO labeled President Barack Obama’s administration “The Bank of Washington.” Chris Gronet offered the description in an internal email one year before the company collapsed in 2010, costing taxpayers roughly $500 million. “The Bank of Washington continues to help us!” he wrote in the October 2009 e-mail, which described several government programs and incentives. The email bolsters GOP claims that Obama’s support of green-tech companies amounted to “crony capitalism.” Several White House officials had close ties to green-tech companies, and many green-tech executives have donated to Obama’s political campaigns.

Only a third of expected private investment and a fifth of expected jobs have been delivered among six companies selected by the state of Michigan to receive special tax breaks. An additional company is in the process of being removed from the program. These tax breaks came as part of the state's Renaissance Zones program. Companies selected for the program have been exempt from the Michigan Business Tax, state education tax, personal and real property taxes, and local income taxes. "Renaissance Zones are selective abatements to areas and businesses that eliminate virtually all state and local taxes," said James Hohman,...

A state fund intended to create 390 Michigan jobs has loaned $7.7 million to 35 companies and created 79 jobs — only 20 percent of the number initially promised. Ann Arbor SPARK received an $8 million grant in 2006 to create the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund, which used $7.7 million of that amount. The grant was awarded as part of the Competitive Edge Technology Grants and Loans program, which exists "to encourage the development of competitive edge technologies to create jobs in the state." Skip Simms, manager of the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund, said in an email, "We saw a...

Unable to reach a deal with its lenders, upstart wireless carrier LightSquared will file for bankruptcy Monday, according to two sources with knowledge of the company's plans. The move has been widely expected, since the company's options for appeasing its creditors were running out. LightSquare's lenders claim that it has been in default on its debt since its $9 billion partnership with Sprint Nextel

It was just one line slipped into the middle of a paragraph of Mitt Romney’s speech on April 3 celebrating his primary victories in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia: “And the most vulnerable have been hurt the most — over 30 percent of single moms are struggling in poverty.” Seemingly unremarkable, these 19 words represent one of the many steps Romney will be taking as he treks back to the center in the aftermath of a primary campaign dominated by the hard right. It was only two months ago, after all, that Romney told CNN: “I’m not concerned...

President Obama raised several hundred million dollars during the 2008 election, more than twice what Republican rival John McCain raised and a far cry more than any other U.S. President before him. The result? Obama’s fundraising achievements have ushered in a degree of crony capitalism Americans have quite possibly never witnessed before. The voluminous scale of political favoritism, and in some cases downright corruption, in the current administration has undermined taxpayers and trampled on the U.S. Constitution, as corporate bailouts, legislative kickbacks, and shady government appointments have become commonplace in the Obama White House. Crony capitalism, also referred to as...

Why on earth did President Obama offer algae as a solution to America's energy problems? I suspect that if he could, he would press the rewind button and erase the comment, as it has exposed him to widespread ridicule from heavyweights like Charles Krauthammer.  But the question remains: why bring it up at all?An answer may lie in his addiction to crony capitalism. Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon reports: Solazyme, a San Francisco-based firm that specializes in the plant matter, has received more than $25 million in federal grants and contracts as part of Obama administration's controversial...

As the early primaries draw near, Newt Gingrich’s Achilles’ heel could be the millions he was paid by Freddie Mac. Yesterday morning, top rival Mitt Romney called on Gingrich to return the money during a Fox News appearance. For Gingrich, Romney’s request was merely the latest in series of blows since Bloomberg first reported the payments, estimated at $1.6–$1.8 million, in mid-November. “It’s a perfect argument against Gingrich because it ties him to the sleazy practices of the beltway when he is trying to run as an outsider,” observes Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University...

President Obama, progressive politicians, Occupy protestors, and leftist intellectuals are having a field day attacking what they call the failures and excesses of capitalism. They declare wealth to be prima facie evidence of perfidy, making no distinction as to how it was obtained. They preach equality, not just in opportunity but in economic outcome. In their eyes, all members of the 1% are already guilty, so economic justice demands that the rich be heavily taxed, not just to lift others up, but to bring them down. Some defenders of capitalism draw a sharp distinction between those who obtained their wealth...

Economic Systems: The former head of the Service Employees International Union says capitalism is on the ash heap of history and sees China as our role model. We have seen his future, however, and it doesn't work. President Obama once reportedly told aides, according to the New York Times, that things would be easier if he were president of China. Presumably he meant there would be no pesky things like a Congress, free elections and a free press to deal with. Former SEIU chief Andy Stern, who may still hold the record for visits to the White House under this...

The last time I checked, didn’t the Left call this sort of thing ‘crony capitalism?’ Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work. Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor. As you probably know, smallpox was eradicated in the wild decades ago: mostly because it was a genuinely terrifying threat...

1. Alabama is a wonderfully free "right-to-work" state, which simply means it prevents unions from extracting dues from workers who do not wish to join. 2. General Electric's CEO Jeff Immelt is the poster-boy for crony capitalism, having backed Obama's rush to socialized medicine and green energy to benefit various of its business units. 3. It turns out that GE's Aviation division is breaking ground on a new factory in Alabama. And, unlike Boeing, which tried to build a factory in a right-to-work-state, the National Labor Relations Board hasn't uttered a peep. But I'm sure that's just a coincidence. Remember...