The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal released their 2010 Index of Economic Freedom. The index ranks economic freedom and opportunity around the world.

Here's where the United States ranks in various categories (notice all the red arrows in 2009):

And here is their summary...

The United States’ economic freedom score is 78.0, making its economy the 8th freest in the 2010 Index. Its score is 2.7 points lower than last year, reflecting notable decreases in financial freedom, monetary freedom, and property rights. The United States has fallen to 2nd place out of three countries in the North America region.

The U.S. government’s interventionist responses to the financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 have significantly undermined economic freedom and long-term prospects for economic growth. Economic freedom has declined in seven of the 10 categories measured in the Index.

Uncertainties caused by ongoing regulatory changes and politically influenced stimulus spending have discouraged entrepreneurship and job creation, slowing recovery. Leadership in free trade has been undercut by “Buy American” provisions in stimulus legislation and failure to pursue previously agreed free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea. Tax rates are increasingly uncompetitive, and massive stimulus spending is creating unprecedented deficits. Bailouts of financial and automotive firms have generated concerns about property rights.

Ouch. We're not even ranked #1 in North America anymore!

Karl Rove writing in The Wall Street Journal...

[F]rom Jan. 20, 2001, to Jan. 20, 2009, the debt held by the public grew $3 trillion under Mr. Bush—to $6.3 trillion from $3.3 trillion at a time when the national economy grew as well.

By comparison, from the day Mr. Obama took office last year to the end of the current fiscal year, according to the Office of Management and Budget, the debt held by the public will grow by $3.3 trillion. In 20 months, Mr. Obama will add as much debt as Mr. Bush ran up in eight years.

Bush and Obama are taking us to the same place -- economic ruin -- but they are doing so at different speeds. Bush was flying commercial while Obama is flying at supersonic speeds. One thing is clear; if our leaders don't start acting in a fiscally responsible way, the U.S. might never recover and economic depression may ensue.

CNS News catches The Washington Post cherry picking the results of its own poll. Hey, I thought only the Bush administration engaged in that type of behavior.

(CNSNews.com) - A large majority of Americans say they want a smaller government that provides them with fewer services, according to a new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News. But the Washington Post story about the poll makes no mention of this fact.
 
The poll asked: “Generally speaking, would you say you favor smaller government with fewer services, or larger government with more services?”
 
Fifty-eight percent said they favor a smaller government with fewer services, and only 38 percent said they favor a larger government with more services.
 
The Post did not mention the results from this poll question in its news story about the poll.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage lenders that helped fuel the housing crisis, will cost taxpayers at least $400 billion. Yay... happy new year!

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Taxpayer losses from supporting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will top $400 billion, according to Peter Wallison, a former general counsel at the Treasury who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“The situation is they are losing gobs of money, up to $400 billion in mortgages,” Wallison said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The Treasury Department recognized last week that losses will be more than $400 billion when it raised its limit on federal support for the two government-sponsored enterprises, he said.

The U.S. seized the two mortgage financiers in 2008 as the government struggled to prevent a meltdown of the financial system. The debt of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks grew an average of $184 billion annually from 1998 to 2008, helping fuel a bubble that drove home prices up by 107 percent between 2000 and mid-2006, according to the S&P/Case- Shiller home-price index.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac... end them, don't mend them. Why do we need them anyway? During the last 3-4 years, we've seen firsthand what happens when companies lend money to "homeowners" who can't afford to pay it back -- they default or simply walk away because they have nothing to lose. Interest only, no income verification loans with no money down is a recipe for a housing crisis and a global financial meltdown.

We need responsible legislators who will end programs like these, but instead, we have Democrats who will only seek to make them larger.

Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com drops the hammer on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

From CNN...

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said that the thwarting of the attempt to blow up the Amsterdam-Detroit flight this week demonstrated that “the system worked.”

Asked by CNN’s Candy Crowley on “State of the Union” how that could be possible when the young Nigerian who sought to set off the bomb was able to smuggle explosive liquid onto the flight, Napolitano responded: “We’re asking the same questions.”

Ed's response...

I suppose one can make that argument — if one assumes that the system includes allowing a man included on a watch list onto an airplane, allowing his visa to remain in force even after his own father informs the US that he’s become a radical jihadi, assuming that any explosive said terrorist will smuggle onto the plane will fizzle out, and that only quick thinking by the other passengers on the plane kept the jihadi from trying it again while he barbecued his crotch.

Is that the actual system we put in place after 9/11? Because if it is, a lot of heads need to roll, starting with the woman who believes that this near-miss represents a validation of the system. Most of us would prefer to keep the known radical Islamist terrorists off the plane in the first place.

Visit HotAir to watch Janet Napolitano's mind at work and to vote in their poll.

Don Suber notices that lobbyists have thrived under the Obama administration despite a bad economy and "reforms."

PJTV.com examines how bad social and economic policies destroyed the city of Detroit, Michigan. Is America next?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed corporations that fueled the housing crisis, received a Christmas miracle. The Obama administration agreed to cover unlimited losses for the next three years AND they rewarded Fannie and Freddie executives with $6 million in bonuses for a job well done.

Now I know why they waited until Christmas Eve to drop this bomb. From the Wall Street Journal...

Doubling down on stupidThe Treasury announced Thursday it was removing the caps that limited the amount of available capital to the companies to $200 billion each.

Unlimited access to bailout funds through 2012 was "necessary for preserving the continued strength and stability of the mortgage market," the Treasury said. Fannie and Freddie purchase or guarantee most U.S. home mortgages and have run up huge losses stemming from the worst wave of defaults since the 1930s.

"The timing of this executive order giving Fannie and Freddie a blank check is no coincidence," said Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee. He said the Christmas Eve announcement was designed "to prevent the general public from taking note."

Treasury officials couldn't be reached for comment Friday. [Editor: Of course not!]

So far, Treasury has provided $60 billion of capital to Fannie and $51 billion to Freddie. Mahesh Swaminathan, a senior mortgage analyst at Credit Suisse in New York, said he didn't believe Fannie and Freddie would need more than $200 billion apiece from the Treasury. But he and other analysts have said the market would find a larger commitment from the Treasury reassuring.

That is reassuring. After all, Fannie and Freddie loaned billions of dollars to people who couldn't afford to pay back their loans and then they sold their worthless paper to other financial institutions in the form of mortgaged backed securities, thereby infecting the global financial system with steaming piles of worthless paper.

Instead of dismantling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so that this never happens again, we're throwing more money at them and we're asking them to lower their already low lending standards in the name of "affordable housing."

We are the dumbest people walking the planet.