Socialist Republic

By Patrick J. Buchanan Barack Obama and George W. Bush seem to have come away from their study of the Great Depression with similar conclusions: To wit: After the Crash of 1929, the Federal Reserve did not move fast enough to save the banks and inject cash into the economy. Second, the New Deal, far from being wastrel deficit spending, was not bold enough. So it was that America wallowed in Continue reading...

Meeting Medvedev Halfway

By Patrick J. Buchanan The morning after Barack Obama's election, the congratulatory message from Moscow was in the chilliest tradition of the Cold War. "I hope for constructive dialogue with you," said Russia's president, "based on trust and considering each other's interests." Dmitry Medvedev went on that day, in his first State of the Union, to charge America with fomenting the Continue reading...

Who Killed Detroit?

By Patrick J. Buchanan Who killed the U.S. auto industry? To hear the media tell it, arrogant corporate chiefs failed to foresee the demand for small, fuel-efficient cars and made gas-guzzling road-hog SUVs no one wanted, while the clever, far-sighted Japanese, Germans and Koreans prepared and built for the future. I dissent. What killed Detroit was Washington, the government of the Continue reading...

As GM Goes, So Goes the GOP

By Patrick J. Buchanan Understandably, Republicans are seething. When Hank Paulson demanded $700 billion to haul away the trash in the dumpsters of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs -- assuring us we could hold a garage sale of the junk -- they rebelled. They acted as the nation, by 100 to one, demanded. They killed the Wall Street bailout. The Dow quickly sank another 1,000 points, and, Continue reading...

Bretton Woods II — No Way

By Patrick J. Buchanan "Laissez-faire is finished, the all-powerful market that is always right, that's finished," said Nicholas Sarkozy, speaking ex cathedra, last month. As a result, said the diminutive French president, it is "necessary to rebuild the entire global financial and monetary system from the bottom up, the way it was done at Bretton Woods after World War II." Sarky's Continue reading...

China’s Path to Power

By Patrick J. Buchanan For decades, before a heedless congregation, some of us have preached the old Hamiltonian gospel. Great nations do not have trade partners. They have trade competitors and rivals. Trade surpluses are superior to trade deficits. Tariffs on foreign goods are preferable to taxes on U.S. producers. Manufacturing, not finance, is the muscle of the nation. Economic Continue reading...

Why Did John McCain Lose?

By Patrick J. Buchanan Why did John McCain lose? Let's start with those "headwinds" into which he was flying. The president of the United States, the leader of his party, was at Nixon-Carter levels of approval, 25 percent, going into Election Day. Sixty-two percent of the nation thought the economy was the No. 1 issue, and 93 percent thought the economy was bad. Two-thirds of the Continue reading...