No Longer "Land of the Free" -- at least, Economically

For the first time in its history, the United States of America has dropped in its economic rating from "Free" to "Mostly Free".

Oh, My.

The Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal have evaluated countries' economic freedom for over ten years based on ten catagories:

Business Freedom

Trade Freedom
Fiscal Freedom

Government Spending

Monetary Freedom

Investment Freedom

Property Rights

Freedom from Corruption

and Labor Freedom

The USA had the largest drop in economic freedom of the top 20 economies in the world. The most losses were suffered in financial freedom, property rights and monetary rights. Note that we don't fare so well on "corruption" either. Perhaps due to all the deals made on health care reform by Senate Democrats?

According to Heritage.org, "Driving it all were the federal government’s interventionist responses to the financial and economic crises of the last two years, which have included politically influenced regulatory changes, protectionist trade restrictions, massive stimulus spending and bailouts of financial and automotive firms deemed “too big to fail.” These policies have resulted in job losses, discouraged entrepreneurship, and saddled America with unprecedented government deficits."

And, according to the Heritage Foundation, our loss of economic freedom is directly tied to our loss of prosperity.
See http://blog.heritage.org/2010/01/20/the-u-s-isnt-as-free-as-it-used-to-be/#more-24256