Wall Street payoff

I don't understand why the titans on Wall Street continue to give financial support to a party and a White House that want to destroy them on their way to destroying the foundations of capitalism itself. It makes no sense that the man who is restricting Wall Street pay through some half-cocked idea of a compensation czar now wants to cast the net even wider. Capitalists, beware! The president has spent entirely too long overseas in the confines of centralized economies, cuddling with world leaders who seem to get their way because the public hand-feeds and cares for the masses.

Could it be that we're missing something here and all this does make sense? Why did the local businesses in the Roaring '20s support Chicago gangster Al Capone? It's obvious. They did so not because they wanted to, but because they had no choice. In the famous words of the Godfather himself, "I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse.” What on the surface appears to be irrational support of Obama and the Democrats by Fortune 1,000 companies can only be understood as a payoff required to keep them afloat in business. Obama’s message to Wall Street (through his surrogate, Rahm): Support us or we bring your business down.

Think I’m kidding? Just this week, headlines ran in local Capitol Hill rags stating, “White House Plan: Neuter the Chamber [of Commerce].” Apparently, the administration doesn’t like the fact that so many businesses are pushing back against Obama’s plans for climate change, more regulation and higher spending that hikes interest rates and crowds out private investment. So instead of heeding the call of the true job creators in this country and trying to work with them on initiatives, he wants to go around them, or run them into the ditch if they don’t see eye to eye with his agenda.

Look, I realize this country and its citizenry are fed up with million-dollar bonuses at a time when folks are struggling, but a centralized structure where government owns all or part of the nation’s so-called private facilities of production is woefully the wrong path to economic renaissance. If we as a nation look to the public sector as a lender/job creator/engineer of first resort instead of one of last resort, then the great American experiment of individual enterprise and innovation has failed. We are on a desperate trajectory toward becoming the European Union of the West, my friends.

It’s welcome at first in these tumultuous times. But that hand up from the ditches of a Depression-like economy will soon be replaced with a hand down — one that suppresses and stifles entrepreneurship and soothingly answers to criticism, “Don’t worry, I have your best interests at heart.” If Wall Street begins to buy that, we’re all in trouble.


Williams can be heard nightly on Sirius/XM Power 169 from 9 to 10 p.m. EST.

Visit www.armstrongwilliams.com .