Looming Ash Heaps

Washington Post syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer warns of the certain, though unintended, consequences of the command control economy that we have moved closer to in recent weeks. He writes:

Lobbying used to be about advantages at the margin -- a regulatory break here, a subsidy there. Now lobbying is about life and death. Your lending institution or industry gets a bailout -- or it dies.

You used to go to New York for capital. Now Wall Street, broke, is coming to Washington. With unimaginably large sums of money being given out by Washington, the Obama administration, through no fault of its own, will be subject to the most intense, most frenzied lobbying in American history.

After discussing the volatility, both downward and upward, that politicization has brought to the financial markets over the last two months, Mr. Krauthammer describes the effects of turning business decisions for automakers over to the political class, a transfer of power that he says will "make the steel mills of the Soviet Union look the model of efficiency."

Indeed. We stand upon the precipice of an important moment in our history. If the momentum of recent events continues to propel us into a command control economy, we will have lost our way of life.