Morning Bell: President Obama’s “Pro-Business” Policies Are Killing the Free Market

Conn Carroll / February 24, 2010

Last night President Barack Obama held a behind-closed-door dinner with 17 chief executive officers from major U.S. corporations including Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, Verizon Communications’ Ivan Seidenberg, and General Electric’s Jeffrey Immelt. According to Bloomberg, the President made the case to his select guests that his administration is “fundamentally business-friendly.” This comes almost two weeks after the President told BusinessWeek: “[T]he irony is, is that on the left we are perceived as being in the pockets of Big Business. And then on the business side, we are perceived as being anti-business.”

What the President fails to understand is that there is no irony here. It is entirely consistent for big government policies that favor select and politically connected big corporations to hurt the economy as a whole. In fact, almost all well-intentioned government interventions in the market place do exactly that.  In a July 2009 interview with BusinessWeek, President Obama spoke of an earlier behind-closed-door meeting he had with top corporate executives: (more…)