The Democrat leadership in Washington is terrified that people will start blaming them for historically high unemployment levels, despite their best efforts to create or save jobs in Texas District 85 and elsewhere.

Is America becoming more like China under President Obama? Or should we be upset that it isn’t? We’ll talk about the President’s jarring diplomatic trip to Asia and how the markets responded to Ben Bernanke’s New York speech on today’s Coffee and Markets.

It’s another day with the Federal Reserve at the center of discussion as Ben Bernanke heads to New York City to give some significant remarks. Should the Fed be more transparent? Should it be audited? We’ll talk about that and how the markets respond to the latest retail report on the latest podcast.

For the latest edition of Coffee and Markets, we’ll be talking about health care, and how President Obama’s policies could actually hurt the American entrepreneur. We also have a big announcement of a new sponsor and home for the podcast.

President Obama heads to China this weekend for a four day trip at a key juncture for the global economy. What are some of the lessons we’ve learned about prosperity and capitalism in the twenty years since the Berlin Wall fell? All this and more on the latest edition of Coffee and Markets.

The fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago this week sparked the beginning of Eastern Europe’s move towards myriad different forms of capitalism. It’s surprising how quickly the next generation has forgotten the depths of communism, and for many of these countries, it’s incredible to see how far they’ve come in twenty years.

One is inclined to give poor Joe Klein the benefit of the doubt, and conclude that he suffers from another common liberal affliction: the need to engage in moralistic exhortations on subjects about which he knows absolutely nothing. Throw in a heady dose of wishful thinking, and even the most pedigreed establishment mind would be reduced by this to the kind of slathering, bug-eyed hysteria to which Klein appears unfortunately prone.

The media feeds the narrative that one side of the abortion debate is “divisive” and that being a pro-lifer is synonymous with being a right-wing woman-hating extremist. The idea that there might be broader bipartisan support for the pro-life movement seems never to have occurred to them.

Today Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd will present his proposed reforms of financial regulation, which could have massive ramifications for American banks and the entire economy. Will these reforms do anything to stop another crash, or will they spell the end of American small business?

There is a tendency for events that were once chaotic, precarious, and ultimately consequential to seem inevitable once they’re chiseled into our tablets. Today, an equally dismissive approach suggests that those events were inevitable. In fact, they were neither.