Tag Archives: President Obama

Who was the Richest President?

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Mitt Romney’s net worth is estimated at $190 to $250 million. If he ends up defeating Barack Obama in the 2012 Presidential election, how would his wealth rank against other presidents? Would he be the richest president of all time?

Who was the Richest President of all Time?

It turns out that Romney’s wealth falls well short of the richest president of all time. Adjusted for inflation, George Washington was worth a whopping $500 million! JFK would’ve beaten that record but he didn’t live long enough to inherit his father’s massive $1 billion fortune. The figures were compiled by 24/7 Wall Street so I can’t verify them. And frankly, the article’s commentary sheds some light on the author’s stunning historical and economic ignorance.

“(For the first 75 years after Washington’s election)…because there was no central banking system and no commodities regulatory framework, markets were subject to panics.”

Clearly, this writer has never heard of the Bank of North America or the First Bank of the United States or the Second Bank of the United States. And even more clearly, the writer has no understanding of the lessons taught by the Austrian Business Cycle. With that said, here’s more on the richest presidents of all time from 24/7 Wall Street:

The net worth of the presidents varies widely. George Washington was worth over half a billion in today’s dollars. Several presidents went bankrupt.

The fortunes of American presidents are tied to the economy in the eras in which they lived. For the first 75 years after Washington’s election, presidents generally made money on land, crops, and commodity speculation. A president who owned hundreds or thousands of acres could lose most or all of his property after a few years of poor crop yields. Wealthy Americans occasionally lost all of their money through land speculation—leveraging the value of one piece of land to buy additional property. Since there was no reliable national banking system and almost no liquidity in the value of private companies, land was the asset likely to provide the greatest yield, if the property yielded enough to support the costs of operating the farm or plantation…

(See the rest on the richest presidents at 24/7 Wall Street)

President Obama’s War on Civil Rights

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For civil libertarians, it appears that “Hope and Change” means more of the same. Last week, President Obama announced his intention to sign into law a bill that “would deny suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens seized within the nation’s borders, the right to trial and subject them to indefinite detention.”

President Obama’s War on Civil Rights?

Human Rights Watch summed it up pretty well when it stated that “President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.” Not surprisingly, the only presidential candidate who’s voiced disagreement is Ron Paul, who recently pointed out that the bill is “literally legalizing martial law.” Here’s Glenn Greenwald for more on this sinister development:

In one of the least surprising developments imaginable, President Obama – after spending months threatening to veto the Levin/McCain detention bill – yesterday announced that he would instead sign it into law (this is the same individual, of course, who unequivocally vowed when seeking the Democratic nomination to support a filibuster of “any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecom[s],” only to turn around – once he had the nomination secure — and not only vote against such a filibuster, but to vote in favor of the underlying bill itself, so this is perfectly consistent with his past conduct). As a result, the final version of the Levin/McCain bill will be enshrined as law this week as part of the the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). I wrote about the primary provisions and implications of this bill last week, and won’t repeat those points here.

The ACLU said last night that the bill contains “harmful provisions that some legislators have said could authorize the U.S. military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians, including American citizens, anywhere in the world” and added: “if President Obama signs this bill, it will damage his legacy.” Human Rights Watch said that Obama’s decision “does enormous damage to the rule of law both in the US and abroad” and that “President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.”

(See Obama to sign indefinite detention bill into law for the rest)