"I’m talking about sensible analysis by prominent, mainstream economists and other experts explaining that a market economy in which profits are private while losses are socialized is, well, not a market economy at all but a socialist or corporate-fascist state." (Peter Klein)
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The original program seems to have been created under the Roosevelt Administration as a kind of socialist adjunct of the New Deal. The problem is that when there's no oversight of government except by government -- as in Red China -- there's no oversight, and so government industries implode before anybody does anything. There doesn't seem to be a board of directors that is financially tied to the mast of the corporation, and so no one is accountable.
I admit however that I really don't know what this huge ghost ship's floundering really means, or who it implicates. Right now everyone in the US is busy pointing fingers. Fox says Obama did it.
Other stations say McCain did it.
It's not yet clear to me what this is about, and it may remain a Rorschach test of one's politics when we try to determine what happened to whom, when.
The interesting thing here is watching the very real power of Wall Street.
The usual justification for that "institution" is that organizes investment: injections of wealth into the economy. Investors also of course deserve their cut: extractions of wealth from the economy.
This bailout (if it happens) will show that on the whole, Wall Street does not really assume the risk of investment. It presumes the right to extract wealth.
It is interesting to watch the so-called "kooks" (monetary theorists in "the Pound tradition" if you will) who can now quite justifiably say "I told you so". The whole system just looks like racket right now.
I confess I have very little understanding of what's going on. Patrick Buchanan had a lengthy editorial in the local paper this morning opining that Wall St. is a bunch of crooks, but we have to save them, in order to save ourselves.
It seems that there ought to be some kind of regulatory control, but I don't know anything about that.
I talked to an economist at work who's kind of a strong Democrat and he said there's no real worries, it's just a news story.
Then I talked to a banker late this afternoon who said that the world is ending.
It's probably somewhere between those two extremes.
I'm not too worried either. I think a solution will be found. The air of "crisis" seems to be a way of speeding a package through that will minimize losses on Wall Street. So, yes, economists can be a bit cooler than bankers right now.
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