Posted on 09/21/2008 9:59:45 AM PDT by vietvet67
Socialists, like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or Indira Gandhi in India, are famous for nationalising the biggest corporations. But the US government has taken over three of its biggest corporations within two weeks. Has the US turned socialist?
American right-wingers moan that this is indeed the case. Meanwhile, Indian leftists are stunned at nationalisation in a country they view as pitilessly capitalist.
Two of the nationalised corporations, Fannie May and Freddie Mac, are by far the biggest mortgage lenders in the world, with $5 trillion of mortgages and loans on their books. That’s five times India’s GDP, to put their size in perspective. The third corporation, AIG, is the biggest insurance company in the world. No nationalisation in professedly socialist countries was ever so big.
Leftists suspect the US takeovers aim to rescue rich shareholders. Not so. The government will acquire 79.9% of the shares of these companies at virtually zero cost, pushing down the share price close to zero. So, rich shareholders have been wiped out, and the bosses of all three corporations have been sacked.
This is not a rescue of the rich. It is a rescue of ordinary people who need mortgages and a functioning housing market, which would have collapsed had Fannie May and Freddie Mac gone bust. The takeover of AIG will save millions of insurance policy holders from losing their coverage and annuities. The takeovers aim to prevent financial panic from spreading and dragging down the whole economy, as happened in the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The usual procedure in a capitalist welfare state is to let mismanaged companies go bust, penalising the shareholders and managers, and then provide safety nets to those adversely affected.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofindia.indiatimes.com ...
“We are left with the government running the show.”
And we know how that usually works out..
“I believe the intent is to use funds to soak up ownership until they are out of the water, then place the stock back onto the public marketplace.”
Thats the other half of this problem no one is talking about... Apart from the bailout itslf, now that the gov’t effectively owns these entities it will NEVER privatize them again. EVER. The federal government is like the Borg... it only swallows and assimilates. No matter how fat and retarded it gets it ALWAYS thinks it’s smarter than you.
Mark my words, Democrats will use this bailout as a gateway to seizure of more private entities. This is the biggest step towards Socialism since the New Deal. We are in very deep trouble. This is just the beginning. Joe American is about to get a mmuch smaller paycheck.
The scary thing is:
There is socialist idealist on the verge of winning the election this November. It’s like the perfect socialist storm.
Becoming?
“Apart from the bailout itslf, now that the gov’t effectively owns these entities it will NEVER privatize them again. EVER.”
That is my biggest fear in all of this.
The US takeovers, by contrast, are temporary affairs, to be followed by re-privatisation once the crisis is resolved. The corporations will be obliged to sell chunks of their assets to pay off debts and attain stability. They will then be re-privatised. They will emerge greatly shrunken, and perhaps broken into smaller units.
Nationalisation is a misleading word for this process. It is better called forced restructuring by the government, as a pre-emptive safety net. It aims to save citizens from pain, but within a market economy framework.
The US Gov’t spending my $$$ to bailout these companies makes me VERY uncomfortable and YES the US is becoming Socialist. If the described outcome above works out, I think that we may well have dodged a bullet. However, if those companies are not quickly removed from the Gov’ts control, they never will be...
Big time CEO’s that green light these kinds of risks, banking on the Tax payers to bail them out if things don’t go well, should have ALL there assets taken from them and be thrown in jail.
Bad guys not being punished = injustice.
Pawns (like taxpayers) being punished = injustice.
How many more bailouts will happen next month?
‘Swaminomics’ is a section on the Times of India / The Economic Times newspapers:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articlelist/msid-21649661.cms
The Times of India >>> Columnists >>> Opinion >>> Swaminomics
by
Swaminathan A Aiyar
I can see both sides of this. Going through a depression is not something anyone wants, but by bailing them out all we do is spread out the duration of the bad times.
However, what I do expect to see is, everyone of these managers and CEOs that cooked the books go to prison and have all their money stripped from them. This is the only way to help prevent this type of thing in the future. If the only penatly is that they no longer get to steal/mismanage a business then there is no reason to stop doing this.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder[er] is less to fear.”
Agree.
With two terms of B. Hussein OBAMA you can expect a full 10 by the time he leaves office, that is.... IF.... he leaves office!
There is socialist idealist on the verge of winning the election this November. It’s like the perfect socialist storm.
This is Not a Conincidence. There is a plan in operation now to bring down the American economy and simultaneously present B. Hussein as the savior who can solve all our problems. But he is Not a socialist, he is a Communist and when he is done America will be an atheistic Communist Muslim state. It will be the Islamic Republic of America, with Hussein as Caliph.
Does the Pope eat chicken?
When we get rid of the Washington “flim flam artists” and elect decent and honest and truthful people to guide our once great Nation.
What do the Communists want you to believe is inevitable Communism or socialism?
If you study Marx’ Communist Manifesto you will find that in essence Marx said the proletarian revolution would establish the SOCIALIST dictatorship of the proletariat.
To achieve the SOCIALIST dictatorship of the proletariat, three things would have to be accomplished:
(I) The elimination of all right to private property;
(2) The dissolution of the family unit; and
(3) Destruction of what Marx referred to as the “opiate of the people,” religion.
Marx went on to state that when the dictatorship of the proletariat had accomplished these three things throughout the world, and after some undetermined length of time ..... the all powerful state’ would miraculously wither away and state socialism would give way to Communism.
Knowing that Economic Marxism would never sell in the U.S., the followers of Antonio Gramsci (The Frankfurt School) brought Cultural Marxism (P.C.) to America.
Fannie and Freddie were promoted using Cultural Marxist categories. I.e., it was all about blacks and women, not about socialism. Remember when Edith Bunker couldn’t get a loan, because she was a woman? Remember the “Lou Grant” episode about “redlining”? The Carter and Clinton administrations branded anybody who grumbled about the cost or the corruption at Fannie and Freddie as racist and sexist.
The principle is: Government gets its foot in the door using Cultural Marxist excuses. Then, loot the business or institution. Then, when it is clear to everyone that the industry or institution is teetering, bail it out, “to save capitalism.”
Presto! You’ve nationalized/socialized a huge sector of the economy, without ever uttering a word in favor of socialism. In fact, keeping up a steady patter AGAINST socialism while socializing the economy just adds to the fun—and profit.
Very well put, and pithy to boot.
You are basically eliminating the Constitution. Amendment I and II are co-dependent. The 2nd Amendment is the reset button for the Constitution and I guarantee you, it will be used.
government running the show - exactly the way the Democrats and RINO’s want it - with THEM at the head of it siphoning off big chunks of it for their own personal enrichment for “walking around money”. The Democrats had Fannie & Freddie for their little playgound for a long time; any attempt to get in to look at the books by someone unbiased was blocked by Dems. If that hadn’t been bypassed of late, the little corrupt F&F setup would have continued unabated and no one the wiser even now. McCain predicted it in 2005 and tried to pass a bill dealing with it and heading it off, but as usual, the Dems blocked it, I suppose with RINO help.
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