President Obama - The CEO Who Knows Nothing

By Wayne Allyn Root

Let's assume for a moment that Obama really knew nothing about the IRS scandal. That would make him the most incompetent and clueless CEO in history. The first time the president of the United States allegedly found out about the IRS scandal was on a Friday, less than two weeks ago, just like the rest of us. We are led to believe he was watching CNN and they mentioned the IRS scandal. And I guess we’re to believe that Obama turned to his Chief of Staff and said, “Wow, those IRS dudes really went rogue!” [more...]

Barack Obama's Scandals Confirm That He's Not a CEO

By Carl Schramm

Every CEO is a politician. Not every politician is a CEO. The current set of messes that President Obama faces makes the point. They are as much management failures as they are political/legal nightmares. There is a price for having no market-facing executive experience. Indeed, Mr. Obama’s first cabinet had almost no private sector management experience.

Most of our better presidents have had business or military leadership experience. This is of tremendous value when running the world’s largest organization. Those who haven’t, like Bill Clinton himself, tested by failure as a politician and familiar with the executive role governors play, knew that private sector executives have a different view of what successful management is and kept a few close at hand. [more...]

It's Time for City Planners to Adapt a New Model

By Carl Schramm

Cities that are essentially supplicants to higher levels of government have one of two paths for planning. One is to become yet more proficient at supplication; in a bad national economy this path spells further decline. The other is to imagine rebuilding an economy that achieves scale growth. Planners never speak to the economic possibilities because apparently they don’t know how economic growth actually happens.

Going forward we need “proto-dynamic” plans for cities. They would sketch out an economic path leading to self-sustenance where the city produces more than it consumes in terms of the larger economy. This is the only path that will allow a city to anticipate any substantial growth and the capacity to eliminate poverty for those who live there. To form such a goal a city has to think of how it can generate sufficient industry to provide jobs for its unemployed. This must be the first order objective and it eludes planners because they have no idea of how the complexities of dynamic economies actually are sparked to life. [more...]

Carl Schramm is a best-selling author, economist and entrepreneur and blogs for the George W. Bush Institute. His column, Messy Capitalism, appears in Forbes. His writing is also published in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, City Journal and the Harvard Business Review. He has appeared many times on television as a guest of Charlie Rose (PBS), Brian Sullivan (CNBC), David Asman and Gerri Willis (Fox Business). 

What the Boston Terror Attack Says about the U.S. Economy

By Wayne Allyn Root

Until now, the media and terrorism experts have only discussed the human tragedy of the Boston terror attack. But what about the economic tragedy this foretells? We are in grave danger.

First, this is much more than pure terrorism; it is economic terrorism. Our radical Muslim enemies are not interested in just the immediate pain of a terrorist attack. This is all part of a long-term purposeful plan to bleed our economy dry and cause economic collapse. And it’s working.

Each time there is a new terrorist attack, no matter how small, no matter how ineffective, they scare Americans into accepting a much bigger police state. More money is spent on security, more police are hired, Homeland Security expands and dramatically increases its budget, the FBI and CIA ask for more money, each city on the terrorism threat list demands more money, and each police department in America demands more sophisticated weaponry. Don’t forget the cost to private industry. Each threat of terrorism results in millions more being spent to guard each sporting event, political event, celebrity event. This all raises taxes, the cost to attend each event, and of course the exploding national debt. Each and every attack, or even attempted attack, is met with hysterical cries to grow government bigger and spend more - and it's money we don’t have. [more...]