Don’t kid yourself - - this is high-stakes stuff. If the mechanisms of the free market - - that is, private persons and organizations who, driven by their own natural interests, seek to acquire the best possible goods and services at the lowest possible prices, and who seek to sell their goods and services for the highest price they can get for them - - if the decisions and behaviors of individual private citizens don’t produce a desirable outcome, then which individual can make all the “right” decisions, and mandate all the “right” behaviors, so we can all enjoy a desirable outcome?

People of the “protester mentality” don’t often consider these more detailed, more delicate, and more difficult questions. Yet, world history is replete with kings, queens, dictators, and - - yes - - even Prime Ministers and Presidents - - who are certain in their own minds that “as long as I’m making all the decisions, then things will turn out good.”

This is precisely the certainty that President Obama displays. In the past three weeks, alone, our President used his influence to oust the C.E.O. of the General Motors Corporation, and now appears to be more-less hand-picking a new board of directors for G.M. As was noted in a Washington Times article two weeks ago, Mr. Obama’s Treasury Department appears to be creating a new position in our government - - the office of the “U.S. Executive Compensation Specialist” - - a government appointee who will determine how much money business managers and executives will be “permitted” to earn, and who will also seek to take away earnings from Americans who are believed to have been paid “too much.” It also appears that, via the Treasury Department, Mr. Obama intends to have other CEO’s removed and replaced as well.

So is this the pathway to a “more moral” U.S. economy? Nobody questions that there have been serious failures among many American corporations. But does this one man, Barack Obama, know the banking, and insurance, and automotive, and healthcare, and energy businesses so well that he, alone, can determine what are “fair” wages, and prices, and practices in all situations.

Such an assumption of the U.S. President defies the limitations of the executive office as set forth in the U.S. Constitution. But constitutional limits don’t seem to matter to our current President.

So now it is left to the American citizenry and the U.S. Congress to determine if this one man, Barack Obama , is so wise, so all-knowing, so just and so good, that he can make all the decisions necessary to produce this “more moral” economy. How will the American people respond to this all-important question?