by CHQ Staff
Strategic tax and wealth protection guru attorney Denis Kleinfeld recently posted a column on NewsMax that is worth parsing and passing along as an interesting counterpoint to the conventional wisdom of Big Media.
Kleinfeld wrote that, of the many risks to the investment markets, none is greater than the risk of errant government policy.
This is certainly true and as we see it, before the Obama era it was accepted wisdom, especially among Republicans, that government interference in the economy was bad and something to be avoided except in the direst of circumstances.
However, says Kleinfeld, free-market capitalism is under attack by the political-social-intellectual-elitist who deeply believe in the democratic socialist ideology—and hostile to any dissent from the party line.
This ideology is effectively a secular religion based on the illusionary belief that a hybrid of collectivist economic elements and capitalism imposed and enforced by a strong central government can create a utopian society.
This attack Mr. Kleinfeld warns against is particularly dangerous now because, since the beginning of the Obama era, the Democratic political establishment, and Republican political establishment, both accepted as normal the country’s economic stagnation, wealth redistribution, submission to international governance, and loss of Constitutional freedoms.
Quoting William F. Simon, former Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Kleinfeld observes, “America was born a capitalist nation, was created a capitalist nation by the intent of its founders and the Constitution and developed a culture and a civilization that were capitalist to the core.”
“…I have been watching the tragic spectacle of citizens’ groups, businessmen, politicians, and media people systematically laying waste to our free-enterprise system and our freedom even as they earnestly—often sincerely—proclaimed their devotion to both.”
Against this political backdrop, notes Kleinfeld, Donald Trump was elected President.
He was elected by millions of Americans who believed he would constrain the worst excesses of the government. They had nothing but contempt for the existing political establishment who had no regard for their economic and personal welfare.
Electing Trump gave those desperate to slip the chains of government hope, wrote Mr. Kleinfeld.
And so far, what we have seen since the election of President Trump is the disruption of accepting economic stagnation and loss of personal freedoms as the new normal.
One of his first Executive Orders was to start getting rid of regulations.
As a free-market capitalist not part of any political establishment, President Trump is unique among American presidents, and the current political leaders in the world, noted Kleinfeld.
Trump is a full-fledged product of the private sector.
Under his leadership, in just two years the United States solidly re-established its credentials globally as the sole superpower economy.
Trump’s policy choices reflect the vast difference in the leadership mentality between someone from the private sector trained by risking their own money to make money, as opposed to politicians spending unlimited amounts of money with no personal financial accountability.
Now, here’s where Kleinfeld’s analysis becomes particularly interesting to us.
“Will the Socialist Democrats of the Congress, and their like-minded in the judiciary, continue their assault on America’s fundamental liberties and capitalism?” he asks.
Mr. Kleinfeld says, although unquantifiable, viable markets require economic freedom.
It is, he claims, an elusive idea that exists only in the absence of government coercion.
Unlike government establishing national purposes and goals, the free-market is millions of people making individual decisions for reason of their own.
But here’s the problem as we see it, Mr. Kleinfeld is right, but the greatest threat to those free markets is not the Democrats, everyone knows they are at heart socialists and crony capitalists, it is from cynical and spineless Republicans who give nothing but lip service to the ideals of personal and economic independence.
And one need look no further than their last few years in the majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate for examples of funding for vast “green energy” boondoggles, resistance to deregulation of large sectors of the economy, failure to free one-sixth of the economy from the chains of Obamacare and other market distorting policies.
Mr. Kleinfeld closes by observing that tigers don’t change their stripes, meaning he doubts most Republicans will step forward to fight for economic liberty – and we think the evidence of the past few years shows he’s right about that.
Meaning, as Kleinfeld concludes, the continuing viability of the financial markets is dependent on President Trump holding firm on his policies, and we might add, not counting on any help from the Capitol Hill GOP establishment.
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Photo “Donald Trump” by Michael Vadon. CC BY-SA 4.0.
