Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Its the Regulations That Get you

57% of Americans Worry About Too Much Regulation of Business
We're all anti-statists now.

BY Mary Katharine Ham

A new Gallup poll shos 57 percent of Americans worry about too much government regulation of business, as opposed to 37 percent who worry about too little. When asked if they'd prefer less or more government regulation of business, Americans want less at a margin of 50-24 percent.

Gallup notes the findings jibe with the findings for similar questions in 2009, "despite a significant loss of the public's confidence in banks and skepticism about the honesty and ethics of bankers over the last two years, and with increased focus on the negative impact of the actions of some big banks and other businesses on the nation's financial crisis."

The saving grace for statists is that Americans will often accept new regulations, one by one, especially when a politician is adept at demonizing the business for which they're meant. But it might serve as a warning to Obama, who's attempting to pivot with a populist pitch for new bank regulations, that public opinion on regulations hasn't pivoted his way. The banks have taken a brutal beating from every direction (sometimes deservedly so), while Obama has ostentatiously pitched government regulation as the fix for the damage they caused, and yet no one's lining up for new regs. Perhaps the public is simply losing faith in the federal government at the same rate it lost faith in banks.

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