If they had enough bathrooms and cool air circulating, three hours delay in an airplane on the tarmac wouldn’t be so bad. But they don’t, and it’s bad. Real bad. Somebody should do something.

Somebody should also do something about those big bad banks charging overdraft fees at the checkout counter without first asking permission.

And those big bad insurance companies shouldn’t be putting profits ahead of people, as the President accused them of during his latest rant against business. They should increase their payouts and lower their rates.

Well, our government is on the case. The Department of Transportation is set to impose fines up to $27,500 per passenger for tarmac delays over three hours. Let’s see now: $27,500 times 300 passengers is approximately $8,250,000 per delayed flight. Did I get that right? My frequent flyer carrier, American Airlines, suggested that it would save a ton of money by cancelling the flight instead. Spoil sports! They should be willing to sacrifice some of the enormous profits we all know airlines are making.

Bank of America said it would end the practice of honoring overdrafts on debit cards at the checkout counter for a fee. No money, no honey. It seems that getting permission from the over-draught customer, as a new Fed regulation would apparently require, is not feasible. (If it’s not a word, it should be.) In this case, the outcome of eliminating a priced “service” because the regulation is difficult or impossible to implement is being taken as a victory by consumer advocates. Maybe the unintended consequence was intended in this case.

Now, I’ve been stranded on sitting airplanes way too long, but probably not three hours. And, like everyone else on the planet, I’ve had insurance companies deny claims I thought they should have honored. It would be better if they didn’t deny claims and if they never uttered the words, “preexisting condition.” Make them pay.

You see, banks, airlines, and insurance companies all have printing presses in their back rooms. Their ability to pay is limited only by their willingness to pay. Why they don’t all just do right and put people ahead of profits, I don’t know. Why do they have to be so churlish?

The impulse to legislate or regulate desirable outcomes by forcing Paul to pay Peter assumes that Paul has unlimited resources. So, Paul should put people first, not profits. Paul’s unlimited budget should be put in the service of mankind. Paul should provide free lunches.

Economics may be defined many ways. The definition I usually think of has to do with unlimited wants and limited means. It deals with scarcity. Unfortunately, economics exists because there are no free lunches. That is obviously not true in politics. In politics, we can all benefit at the expense of others.

The serial over drafters have caught a break, assuming they don’t mind having to abandon their lattes at the cash register due to insufficient funds. Overdraft fees were a source of revenue to banks that will be replaced on different products and different customers. At some point my “free” checking account won’t be free any more.

At some point the increase in flight cancellations to avoid potential $8,250,000 fines will add to the real burden on the flying public, especially those whose airlines have hub and spoke systems. Cancellations spread and multiply throughout the system. Cancellations are costly to the airlines too, and those costs will have to be made up by higher prices or reduced services. Customers will not only pay more for tickets, but will incur extra costs by having to schedule earlier flights to guarantee arrival times. Or, airlines can just eat the cost. We all know how profitable they are.

Let’s see now. Government spending is out of control. So are budget deficits and debt generation. The taxpayers are in revolt. Tea parties are dominating the political scene. Yet, despite all this, we get an announcement that government contracts will be used to raise wages and other employee benefits. The announcement did not say the government would try to get the best deal for the taxpayer. The goal is more nearly the opposite of that. The goal is the best deal for labor at the expense of the taxpayer. The means is not less spending but more spending, higher deficits, and more debt. It’s bizarre.

Bizarre, yet vaguely familiar. The sub-title quote is from Amity Shlaes’ book on the depression, The Forgotten Man, page 94 of the paperback edition. During the depression, both the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations sought to deal with deflationary forces by dealing with symptoms rather than causes. If wages are falling due to weaker demand for labor relative to supply, prop them up. If farm prices are falling, destroy some crops and drown some piglets.

Measures like the Davis Bacon law are destructive enough during good times. Measures like using government contracts to prop up wages during bad times—high unemployment—are . . . well, bizarre. One would think that getting the best deal from the expenditure of taxpayer dollars would be a no brainer. Apparently not these days. I, for one, will stick to the advice given in the classic Texas book, Don’t Squat with Your Spurs On: “If it don’t make sense, don’t believe it.”

It don’t make sense.

Here is my take, as they say, Mr. President. You come across as super smart, sincere, and as having the interest of our country at heart. You have me convinced on those attributes. I would like to have you as a friend and neighbor. Maybe we could have a beer on my patio and discuss the issues.

If we did have that beer, however, I would try to convince you that your economics and politics are way too far left to suit me, and, apparently, to suit the country as well. I would tell you it’s time to stop the Bush bashing and blaming for all our ills. I once heard that it’s unseemly for anyone over 30 to blame their parents for their shortcomings. I think that applies to Presidents after their first year.

Many will disagree with me, but I think the two most effective programs in dealing with our financial crisis were the TARP for banks designed by Bush appointee, Henry Paulson, and monetary policy, designed by Bush appointee, Ben Bernanke. Not only are those the most effective efforts in saving us from another great depression, but they are the least expensive as well. Start acknowledging that and stop pandering to left and right wing populists by reinforcing their misconceptions about these efforts. There may be short-term political advantages in such pandering, but it looks unseemly and unpresidential.

The unexpected problems you’ve encountered while reversing Bush policies in national and homeland security are additional reasons to stop campaigning against the last administration. You won the election, so move on. As they say, you campaigned in poetry; now you must govern in prose. The solution to every problem is not a speech.

Regarding programs to help the economy, you also need to stop exaggerating the effectiveness of your humongous overly expensive and unfocused stimulus plan. From the beginning there was a disconnect between the content of your sales pitches and what actually emerged from Pelosi and Reid. There was a similar disconnect between how you described your health care proposals and what was being negotiated by the leadership. They always move you farther left, while the country is center right. You probably could move us all in the direction you want in baby steps by incremental changes that reasonable people can agree on. Pick the low hanging fruit first and see how that works. Don’t make us bet the whole farm on a pig in a poke.

In health care, that may mean start with tort reform, interstate competition in insurance, removing limits on training new physicians, expansion of health savings accounts, etc. Use a dial incrementally and opportunistically and stop trying to flip a switch that would change everything all at once. Remember, free enterprise works. The market works. Maybe you can improve outcomes at the margin, but we don’t want you to take our health care system from the market to the government in one fell swoop.

In the financial area, I don’t get your banker bashing. I don’t get why you attribute the sins of a handful of investment banks to all 8000 or so commercial banks. I don’t get taxing them to pay for TARP which is already earning a profit for taxpayers. You want bankers to lend more. So do I, but I don’t see how banker bashing is helping that cause.

Don’t you see that you are creating uncertainty and fear that have bankers afraid of risk taking? Almost a trillion of dollars of excess reserves on bank balance sheets is direct evidence of banker uncertainty and fear. Why do you add to that fear? You are choking the goose you are counting on for golden eggs. You are, in effect, saying that the beatings will continue until morale improves. That’s a joke, not a policy.

What can I tell you about the Congressional democrats, Mr. President? They are not serving you well by pushing you farther and farther to the left. Why not follow the example of President Clinton and build a coalition of moderate democrats and Republicans and pass legislation in the mainstream of American thinking. Your reaction to the Brown victory in Massachusetts was bizaare. He demonstrated how too far left you and the democrats are, and you responded by moving farther in that direction just to appease those who want to see some banker blood on their pitchforks.

As the poll showed, Mr. President, you have chosen your enemies well, with the Republicans perceived as less popular than you and the democrats. “Just say no” may be a useful slogan in fighting teenage drugs and sex, but it isn’t an appealing slogan for serious policymakers. Their strategy seems to be to stand back and not interfere while their political enemies are destroying themselves. That strategy may work politically, but how would we be better off if it did? If they have alternative policies superior to yours, I’d like to hear what they are so I won’t be just voting against you and the democrats. I want to vote for something as well.

Some of my favorite Republican Senators voted no on Ben Bernanke and are running from their yes vote on Tarp. Of course, they are trying to protect their right flank and get out of the crosshairs of the Tea Partiers. But I’d rather see them act more courageously by leading rather than following and trying to appease the ankle biters.

Mr. President, I may vote against everybody next time around, but I would still enjoy having that beer with you.

Populism in U.S. monetary history was usually associated with opposition to the harsh discipline imposed by adherence to the gold standard. Gold money—hard money—was seen to favor creditors over debtors, especially evil bankers over worthy farmers. Going off gold was unthinkable, so the populists wanted to use more plentiful and cheaper silver as the basis or at least a basis for our currency. The battle cry came from William Jennings Bryan’s “thou shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold” in his cross of gold speech in the 1896 presidential campaign.

When I joined the Richmond Fed in August 1968, the main “populist” making trouble for the “hard money Fed” was Wright Patman, Democratic Congressman from Texas, and Chairman of the House Banking Committee.

Mr. Patman had apparently paid a visit to the Richmond Fed before I arrived and legend had it that he had had the dining room menu printed in the Congressional Record. Apparently, he disapproved, but of what specifically I never heard. Perhaps it was the shad row that was served in season on board meeting days. If so, I could agree with him on that. My favorite was a combination of Virginia ham and lightly breaded fried oysters. It wasn’t very fancy; just good home cooking.

Eating in the dining room was a rare treat for a young economist, but a price had to be paid by getting grilled by the Bank’s President. The economics questions weren’t tough. The questions that I dreaded had to do with things like what kind of mileage I got on my car and how much electricity did I use on average. I never knew the answers to such questions, which made me look uninformed and lazy in the boss’s eyes.

When I first arrived, there was a tradition of passing around a box of cigars at the conclusion of the board lunch and we could each take one, even though most of us didn’t smoke. I didn’t think a once-a-month cigar would be addictive, and I still don’t. Unfortunately, because of Wright Patman’s close attention to such matters, the cigar ritual was dropped shortly after my arrival.

When I became President of the Dallas Fed in early 1991, our populist nemesis was another Texas Congressman, Henry B. Gonzalez, Chairman of the House Banking Committee. What is it about Texas? Like Patman, Mr. Gonzalez came at us from the left. Money was always too tight to suit him. Mr. Gonzales had many claims to fame, one of which was that he once punched a guy during a difference of opinion. Turned out he was a boxer in his younger days.

It was with some trepidation that I found myself sitting beside him during a banquet in his home town of San Antonio and was the person chosen to introduce him. He was the keynote speaker. As it turned out, he and I hit it off at dinner and peace broke out between him and the Fed, at least for that evening.

I didn’t use to think of Congressman Ron Paul—guess where he’s from—as a populist. After all, he came at us from the right, not the left. I thought of him as a Libertarian who was steeped in Austrian economics. He came by for a visit at some point during the early 1990s and was surprised that a Fed guy—that’s me—was somewhat familiar with Austrian economics, even though I grew up on Friedman rather than Hayek.

Mr. Paul and I visited again when I was Chancellor of the Texas A&M University System in 2005 or 2006. He came to address a Young Republican’s Club and the attendance was embarrassingly small. Nevertheless, he was a good sport and gave them the “whole load” as if there was standing room only. He is quite a gentleman. Unfortunately, that makes his anti-Fed views appear less threatening even though the title of his latest book is End the Fed.

I guess “hard money populist” is a term that fits Ron Paul, even though, as a practical matter, I’d rather go with Wayne Angell’s version.

The rhetoric and the committee vote on the confirmation of Chairman Bernanke has been very distressing for me in many ways, not the least of which is that several of my friends seem to have turned anti-Fed in order to burnish their new-found populist personas. I just don’t see how they can honestly get around the fact that the Chairman has done an outstanding job over the past couple of years.

Let’s see now, breast cancer kills thirty-somethings and forty-somethings, but it kills more fifty-somethings and up. So, since we are all going to be sharing the cost of detection and treatment more than ever, why don’t you gals below fifty be good  sports about it? 

We know best, and we recommend that you not be checked. Heck, we even recommend that you not check yourself. We want to spare you the inconvenience and the potential anxiety of a false positive. It would be horrible to think you have cancer and then find out you don’t.

What about positives, you ask, and false negatives? Well, you won’t get those if you don’t get checked. Trust us. We know what’s best for you. And don’t you be sneaking into the bathroom for a self examination, you hear.

"Where did that crazy idea come from?"

"There's nothing in the bill like that?"

"The crazies are making this stuff up."

"It's just not true."

"It doesn't exist."

"We are going to take it out of the bill, since it confuses people."

A recurring one happened again the other day. This time I had just finished making flight and hotel arrangements to attend our granddaughter's high school graduation in May. She's 17 years old and has already been accepted into the honors program of some fine universities. (Forgive me.)

This forthcoming milestone was making me feel my age as Suzanne (Big Mama) and I went out for Tex-Mex. Since she was my designated driver, I ordered a margarita. The waiter asked for my driver's license as proof of age.  I said, "Don't be ridiculous. You are kidding, aren't you?" He said with a straight face, "No, I have to do it." He swiped my license in some sort of machine attached to the cash register. I guess it's now part of my permanent record.

I've been through this routine before.  One day I was carded on the same day that I was given a senior citizens discount to a movie without asking for it. The state calls it "zero tolerance." Zero tolerance requires adult waiters, who have good vision and a brain, to card the Big Daddies of granddaughters about to set the college world on fire.

I don't know about you, but a government that requires its citizens to "be ridiculous" scares me. Laws that override common sense and good judgment scare me.

The waiters, of course, are victimized more than I am. It is they who are required to be ridiculous. What scares me the most is that the law apparently requires them to be ridiculous with a straight face and without snickering. And they obey. Not so much as a twinkle in the eye.

A government exercising that level of power and intrusion is too big for me. Put me down as a Small Government Guy.