Bankers in Leather . . . .

Out here in Lancaster County, we see a lot of horses used for a variety of purposes. Rarely do we see a horse minus a bridle--for a bridle allows control of the animal. If the horse has acres upon which to run and graze, the bridle may be unnecessary; in a congested area (around cars, for example), the bridle is as much for the protection of the horse as it is to impose the human's will upon him.

Interestingly, the term "unbridled" has come to connote not merely "free," but "wild" or "frenetic".


President Bush (#43) is the first President in history to share my academic degree, an M.B.A. His economic policy has been vintage Republican: "unconstrained capitalism" that would grow jobs, build wealth, and strengthen the economy.

Now, visually do a "find and replace" in the preceding paragraph, and replace "unconstrained" with "unbridled" -- then take another look at the chart above. As I stated in an earlier post, this should NOT have come as a surprise.

The goverment is now toying with the idea of giving the banks even more money in return for (preferred) stock. In most counries this would be called nationalizing the banks. Who would have thought that the Bush/Cheney administration would go down in history as bigger socialists than FDR? The plan would be voluntary, but it still undercuts a basic tenet the Republican Party has held sacred for a century: the government should leave the private sector to manage itself. It will be interesting to see how the candidates respond to this new wrinkle.

The Fed gave A.I.G. another $38 billion yesterday, on top of the $85 billion they already gave it. People are hopping mad (and the $440,000 party the A.I.G. executives threw for themselves didn't help much). John McCain's strategy of talking about William Ayers 24/7 has apparently backfired and he is pulling the ads. While the base was eating it up, they were already in the bag. Independents didn't like it one bit. They want to hear how McCain is going to fix the economy, not who Obama knew 20 years ago. McCain doesn't want to talk about the economy, of course, since what he really and truly has believed his whole life is the free markets work best and the government should stay out of them. But as people watch their 401(k) plans and their pensions and their future go up in smoke, this is a real tough sell. He'd better think of something different to say in the next 50 nanoseconds or he is going to be--in the immortal words of George H.W. Bush--in deep doodoo. (from the website that provides the electoral map (right)

Doctors tend to think that medical science can, single-handedly, solve the world's problems. Business people think that enterprise can do the same thing. Politicians . . . You catch my drift.

But unbridled medicine can lead to Dr. Mengele; unbridled government can lead to Kim Jong-Il, and unbridled business . . . .