The San Francisco Money show started today with a handful of keynote speakers, including Steve Forbes, who delivered the final speech.   If his republican bias was not apparent beforehand, it was pretty clear during his presentation, entitled “Battling the Anti-Capitalist Administration and Washington Politicians–Can They Be Stopped“.


Forbes delivered some compelling arguments on what makes sense for healthcare reform, such as removing restrictions that prevent consumers from buying health insurance across state lines.  He seemed to oppose most of the reforms being pushed by the Obama administration, and cited the example of Britain denying dialysis treatments to the elderly purely due to costs.  Here is a google books link that briefly mentions this, but it’s not entirely clear if these treatment denial policies are still in effect today.

On the topic of government size, Forbes supports small government, lower taxes, and a free market system.  He was of the opinion that the only reward for failure in this country occur in government and not in private industry.  This, we know is completely false, especially in light of the multi trillions in recent government bailouts of private enterprise financial institutions.  Sorry Forbes, nice try.  Almost immediately after this pro-private enterprise anti-government intervention remark, he seemed to give his approval of the bailouts by stressing what a mistake it was to let Lehman Brothers fail.  He also seemed disappointed that the government had not yet stepped in to buy worthless consumer credit card debt from private enterprises.  Despite the obvious misgivings and contradictions in his beliefs, it was a pretty entertaining speech.