Obama: I'd Be A Laissez-Faire Kind Of Guy But Bush Screwed Everything Up

As Slu put it in the sidebar, this is from the "Are you fucking kidding me department" (I didn't use the $#@$ like Slu, it's just how I roll).

Here's what the largest stockholder in 2 of America's 3 auto manufacturers, many of it's largest banks the guy who just appointed a 'compensation czar' and is proposing to take over about 1/5 of the US economy through health care 'reform' has to say about his preferred style.

"I think the irony … is that I actually would like to see a relatively light touch when it comes to the government," he said Tuesday in a White House interview.

..."You set up some rules of the road, ensure transparency and openness, guard against huge systemic risk that will lead...government potentially having to step in to avoid a depression, and then let entrepreneurs and individual businesses compete and do what they do.

"And so it's puzzling to me sometimes to hear the standard conservative critique of what we're doing, when essentially every step we're taking involves cleaning up the mess that we found when we arrived here at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

He'd prefer a light touch by government much like Paris Hilton would really rather just be doing charity work in Africa out of the public spotlight or Bill Clinton would rather just spend a cozy night spooning with Hillary. Unfortunately, life doesn't always let us do what we want.

In that case we must do what we have to, which in Obama's case is regulate the hell out of the private sector.

The Obama administration last night detailed a series of proposals to involve the government more deeply in private markets, from helping to steer borrowers into affordable mortgage loans to imposing new limits on the largest financial companies, in a sweeping effort to curb the kinds of reckless risk-taking that sparked the economic crisis.

...It also asks Congress to authorize the government for the first time to dismantle large firms that fall into trouble, avoiding a chaotic collapse that could disrupt the economy.

Federal oversight would be extended to dark corners of the financial markets, imposing new rules on trading in complex derivatives and securities built from mortgage loans.

The government would create a new agency to protect consumers of mortgages, credit cards and other financial products.

And the administration would increase its coordination with other nations to prevent businesses from migrating to less regulated venues.

Ah yes, the mark of a light touch by government...ensuring no one can escape its grasp.

Poor Obama, forced to enact all of these statist policies by that mean George W. Bush. Why can't the man just finish his waffles while reading Adam Smith?

posted by DrewM. at 10:00 AM

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