The Obama economic team.(THE LAST WORD)(Barack Obama)

As President-elect Obama continues to name the men and women who will fill his administration, I searched in vain for a newly anointed appointee who supplies even a glimmer of hope that the nation's economic meltdown will be properly addressed. What is so desperately needed is an across-the-board shrinkage of government and a return to honest money. But there's no more chance of this happening than there is of the sun rising in the West tomorrow.

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Sound money? The New York Times for November 26 featured news of the latest government/Federal Reserve plan that will supply an additional $800 billion in new lending programs. Reporter Edmund L. Andrews stated that "they would print as much money as needed to revive the nation's crippled banking system." (Emphasis added.) This will not be sound money, the kind that is backed up with precious metals found in some government/Federal Reserve vault. It will be money created out of thin air by the Fed, and it will devalue all existing money. Are you ready for a $10 loaf of bread?

Shrink government? Nary a word about this absolutely necessary course. We are promised that government will become more efficient, not smaller and less burdensome financially or otherwise. What should be cut? How about such programs as foreign aid, education, housing, welfare, medicine, and energy for starters? Why not adhere to the limitations on government so clearly present in the U.S. Constitution that authorizes none of the above-mentioned programs?

The top economic advisers chosen by Obama--Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers--have no experience whatsoever in producing wealth. The soon-to-be Secretary of the Treasury Geithner is a Dartmouth Ivy Leaguer with an advanced degree from Johns Hopkins. Once finished with schooling, he immediately went to work for Henry Kissinger and then acquired a post at the Treasury before becoming a protege of Lawrence Summers. Only 47 years old (same age as Obama), he has already spent 13 years in the Treasury Department, two years at the UN's International Monetary Fund, and five years as the head of the pivotal branch of the Federal Reserve, the New York office. He has never led a producing company, never met a payroll, and never coped with the stifling presence of government impeding the nation's wealth producers. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the most visible manifestation of the American establishment.

Lawrence Summers, another CFR member, was tapped to be the next director of the National Economic Council. He ...