Putting more and more wolves in charge of guarding the henhouse might characterize the big problems we’ve now created for ourselves.

Government is growing.  The private economy is shrinking. Those wielding political power see fewer and fewer problems they believe private citizens can solve on our own.   Soon, each one of us will have our own personal guardian bureaucrat.

The real difference between us and the hens is that the hens are not paying for the wolves’ salaries and benefits.

This past week new rules governing our credit cards kicked in, following passage of the Credit Card Accountability and Responsibility Act, signed into law last year.

The point of the CARD Act is to protect us consumers from the scheming bankers from whom we get our credit cards.

As result of these new protections, consumers can be grateful that credit card interest rates are the only interest rates that are not now dropping.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the average card interest rate is now 1.6% higher than last year and the gap between credit card rates and the prime lending interest rate is the highest it’s been in 22 years.

More good news for consumers is that there is less credit available.  The average credit limit on new cards being issued is down 11% from last year.

And, because the CARD Act implements new rules limiting the flexibility that banks have, for example, in changing rates on balances of overdue accounts or on exceeding credit limits, banks are simply finding new ways to raise revenue.

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Scott Powell, in today’s Investors Business Daily:

‘Atlas Shrugged” — Ayn Rand’s fourth and last novel, published in 1957 — may be second to the Bible as the most influential book read in America, according to a Library of Congress survey. It is required reading in management training at BB&T, the 12th-largest bank in the U.S. and one that resisted taking TARP bailout funds.

Since the Obama administration took office, “Atlas Shrugged” has been enjoying a renaissance with rising sales and library waiting lists, partly because it explains our current economic woes more straightforwardly than most of what we hear from today’s experts.

What happened in Rand’s narrative is coming to pass today, with an anti-business administration reviling private industry and capitalizing on crisis to expand and redirect investment within and between sectors of the economy — setting quotas, prices and compensation.

Businesses responded by retrenching — ceasing to invest, innovate and expand. Whole industries contracted, closed down or moved offshore, much like the U.S. gas and oil drilling industry is doing today. Then, just as now, management became frustrated, discouraged and reluctant to create jobs in an environment of excessive government meddling.

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Since the early twentieth century, periods of real or perceived national emergency have been “critical episodes” in the growth of government’s size, scope, and power in the United States and in many other countries. Hence, the concise conceptualization: Crisis and Leviathan (the main title of my 1987 book on the growth of government in the United States from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century).

In the past century, the first five such critical episodes in the United States were: World War I; the Great Depression; World War II; a multi-faceted set of crises associated with the civil-rights revolution and the Vietnam War, roughly coincident with the presidencies of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon; and the post 9/11 events associated with the so-called War on Terror and the U.S. attacks on and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. We are now amid another such critical episode, which springs from the housing bust that began in 2006, the economic recession that began late in 2007, and the financial debacle that reached its climax in September 2008.

The current troubles are complex and raise a multitude of questions. Many books and articles no doubt will be written to analyze these various issues in scholarly depth and detail, and certainly anything we might say today must be regarded as preliminary, at best. I focus here on a few aspects of the present episode that relate closely to my own research on the growth of government, a field of study to which I have returned again and again over the past thirty years.

I

The current recession has elicited many comparisons with earlier business downturns, especially with the Great Depression. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is often described as an expert on the Great Depression who takes its lessons, as he understands them, deeply into account as he formulates and implements Fed policies. Likewise, many other economists have revisited the Great Depression recently in search of lessons applicable to current policy-making. In all of these reflections, the mainstream economics profession in general has distinguished itself by an astonishing superficiality of historical knowledge and lack of theoretical prowess.

The swiftness with which a great many mainstream economists have reverted to the simplistic “vulgar Keynesianism” that had its heyday from the late 1940s to the late 1960s has been nothing short of shocking, given that by the end of the 1970s such old-fashioned Keynesianism seemed to have been completely discredited and superseded in the leading echelons of the mainstream economics profession. Now it has come roaring back.

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So this is what change looks like. If he were here, Mr. Speaker, in this time of momentous national distress, I would remind the President of the United States that he is not the leader of a party or an ideology; he is the leader of our country—one founded, not to emulate others, but to inspire the world.

As families lose their jobs, their homes, and their dreams for their children; as our troops fight and sacrifice in foreign fields for our liberty and security, President Obama’s obsessive-compulsive pursuit of an abominable government takeover of health care has defied the public’s objections, despoiled this, “The People’s House,” and further alienated Americans from their representative government.

As President Obama’s campaign mantra of “hope and change” has degenerated into “tax and hate,” reputable surveys prior to this vote report: the public overwhelmingly thinks that the U.S. Government is broken. Only 21 percent of the public thinks it is being governed with its consent. Only 26 percent of the public trusts the Federal Government most of the time or always; 56 percent of Americans think the Federal Government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedom of ordinary citizens; 70 percent believe the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors; and 71 percent of Americans think the Federal Government is a special interest.

In the wake of this health care debate’s despicable, dysfunctional process and product, it is clear: The most dangerous special interest is Big Government and President Obama is its lobbyist.

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In early 2008, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson grabbed national attention when he ran for the Democratic nomination for President. He dropped out early in the race but still made headlines for endorsing Obama over Hillary. As thanks, Richardson was named the nominee for Commerce Secretary.  One of the first scandals of the Obama Administration followed almost immediately.  Due to a controversy surrounding a pay-to-play scandal, Richardson was forced to withdraw his name from consideration after only one month.

Richardson quietly slipped out of the national spotlight and most Americans forgot about New Mexico’s corrupt Governor.  Most don’t realize that prosecution for the scandal was quietly discontinued when the Obama team drained the investigator’s budget resource, leaving them unable to pursue prosecution.  The case is still pending and will likely remain that way.

Now back in New Mexico in his final year as Governor, the behavior of a man who was an inconvenient nuisance to the Obama team has revealed itself to be nearly cataclysmic to my state’s future.

Just seven years ago, New Mexico was one of only a handful of states in the black, thanks to the leadership of our previous Republican Governor.  Now, we’ve got an estimated $500 million deficit this year thanks to a government that continues to loot the pockets of taxpayers.

Aside from the absurd corruption, pay-to-play scandals and shady investment deals one of the most obvious evidence of poor management is the sheer size of New Mexico’s government.  With new state agencies and 4,500 new employees, our state government has grown by more than 50% in the last 7 years costing taxpayers $250 million annually. Further, the numbers don’t even include the hundreds of exempt political appointees now drawing a government paycheck.  Those people got jobs as payback for family, favors and financial contributions. Estimates put new political appointees in the neighborhood of 450 costing taxpayers around $50 million a year.

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