Governmental Petroleum II

Good grief, even the New York Times has noticed! In one of those "news analysis" pieces that seemingly were invented for the express purpose of raking George W. Bush over the coals, the Gray Lady today looks at Mr. Obama's record as an antagonist of American (and now British) business. He fired the chief executive of General Motors. He forced Chrysler to merge with an Italian company. He bullied Wall Street firms into cutting bonuses and insurance companies into rolling back premiums. And now he has told British Petroleum to cut its dividend and make a $20 billion down payment on a slush fund to be overseen by the same gentleman who ran the government's payout to the victims of 9/11. In other words, the assets of even a foreign corporation belong to the president of the United States, just as if they were assets of the federal government, to be dispensed according to his wishes.

Really, this is not a good idea. It might have been designed by an academic with no notion of how the real economy works. If Mr. Obama wanted to scare the bejesus out of American and foreign businessmen, to convince them not to invest or to expand or to bring on new hires--and thus to perpetuate the Great Recession--I can't think of a better way to do it. The Gray Lady expresses it more politely, of course: "The question is whether the cumulative effects of these actions create an impression that, over the long run, may make it harder to persuade both American and foreign corporations to cooperate with Mr. Obama’s program to reinvest and reinvigorate the American economy." Blue skies! -- Dan Ford