We spend too much time waiting for orders -- and money -- from Washington.

The collapse of the housing bubble gave politicians a license to do what they wanted to do all along: spend. The usual checks on extravagance, weak as they are, were washed away. Budgets? We'll worry about that later. Inflation? We'll worry about that later.

As I point out in my brand new book, "No, We Can't: Why Government Fails -- and Individuals Succeed," a true free market doesn't require much. It's not like an orchestra in need of a conductor. What it needs is property rights, so no one can take your stuff. Then people trade property to their mutual advantage. Resources move around without the need for a central, coercive government telling people which resources should go where -- or telling them that they must get permission to do what they think is advantageous.

Given time, an economy, unless crippled by further government intervention, will regenerate itself. But during the recession, Keynesians in the administration said government had to "jump-start" the economy because businesses weren't hiring. An economy, however, is not a machine that needs jump-starting. It is people who have objectives they want to achieve.

If the economy continues to recover, President Obama will claim he caused that. It wouldn't be the first time a "leader" ran in front of a crowd and claimed to have led the way. But politicians don't deserve credit for what free people do.

Despite politicians' talk of "giving" money to this or that (remember those tax rebate checks with President George W. Bush's name emblazoned on them?), government has no money of its own. It has to take it from the private sector. Grabbing those scarce resources stifles the real economy.

One of the most important questions in politics should be: "Would the private sector have done better things with that money?"