According to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the economy is in great shape and safe from another financial crisis. They believe more liberal policies to better distribute the benefits would deliver Americans into another golden age, but the facts belie all this. Obamacare, state and local minimum wages laws, new federal overtime rules, and disincentives to work imposed by the recent buildout of federal social programs have raised the cost of hiring workers. Higher businesses taxes—especially for smaller enterprises–and tougher regulations have pushed up the cost of deploying capital. Consequently, Americans are suffering through one of the weakest recoveries on record, and conditions in Europe are no better. The U.S. Justice Department is proposing Deutsche Bank pay $14 billion to pay for its role in a mortgage securities scandal that contributed to the 2008-2009 financial meltdown, and other European banks still await their medicine. Even a settlement one-third that size would require the bank to sell new stock to replace lost capital, and it is not well positioned to do so. The largest bank in Europe’s largest economy has a balance sheet still burdened by dodgy securities and is badly run and not very profitable. Virtually all European banks are