The Audacity of Hypocrisy

In his ongoing effort to micromanage the U.S. economy President Obama used his Dec. 12 weekly radio address to promote his proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. It will be filled with bureaucrats second‐​guessing entrepreneurs and is sure to improve the performance of our financial institutions — much in the manner of the SEC’s bureaucrats alertly nailing Bernie Madoff just 30 years into his Ponzi scheme. Never mind that the federal government had much more to do with the financial meltdown than the banks did, the real knee‐​slapper in his address was his claim that the CFPA “would bring new transparency and accountability to the financial markets…” This, from a man demanding passage of a 2000‐​page health care reform bill that no one, including Mr. Obama, has read. So much for transparency and accountability.