Socialism Many people call the Bush and Obama administration's approach to the economic crisis "socialism". Are they right? Roubini has...written: We're essentially continuing a system where profits are privatized and...losses socialized. Nassim Nicholas Taleb says the same thing: After finishing The Black Swan, I realized there was a cancer. The cancer was a huge buildup of risk-taking based on the lack of understanding of reality. The second problem is the hidden risk with new financial products. And the third is the interdependence among financial institutions. .... Today we still have the same amount of debt, but it belongs to governments. Normally debt would get destroyed and turn to air. Debt is a mistake between lender and borrower, and both should suffer. But the government is socializing all these losses by transforming them into liabilities for your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. What is the effect? The doctor has shown up and relieved the patient's symptoms - and transformed the tumour into a metastatic tumour. We still have the same disease. We still have too much debt, too many big banks, too much state sponsorship of risk-taking. And now we have six million more Americans who are unemployed - a lot more than that if you count hidden unemployment. Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz calls it "socialism for the rich". So do many others. Fascism? Some, however, argue that the economy is more like fascism than socialism. For example, leading journalist Robert Scheer writes: What is proposed is not the nationalization of private corporations but rather a corporate takeover of government. The marriage of highly concentrated corporate power with an authoritarian state that services the politico-economic elite at the expense of the people is more accurately referred to as "financial fascism" [than socialism]. After all, even Hitler never nationalized the Mercedes-Benz company but rather entered into a very profitable partnership with the current car company's corporate ancestor, which made out quite well until Hitler's bubble burst. And Italian historian Gaetano Salvemini argued in 1936 that fascism makes taxpayers responsible to private enterprise, because "the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social" (page 416). .... Remember that one of the best definitions of fascism - the one used by Mussolini - is the "merger of state and corporate power".
Many people call the Bush and Obama administration's approach to the economic crisis "socialism". Are they right?
Roubini has...written:
We're essentially continuing a system where profits are privatized and...losses socialized.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb says the same thing:
After finishing The Black Swan, I realized there was a cancer. The cancer was a huge buildup of risk-taking based on the lack of understanding of reality. The second problem is the hidden risk with new financial products. And the third is the interdependence among financial institutions. .... Today we still have the same amount of debt, but it belongs to governments. Normally debt would get destroyed and turn to air. Debt is a mistake between lender and borrower, and both should suffer. But the government is socializing all these losses by transforming them into liabilities for your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. What is the effect? The doctor has shown up and relieved the patient's symptoms - and transformed the tumour into a metastatic tumour. We still have the same disease. We still have too much debt, too many big banks, too much state sponsorship of risk-taking. And now we have six million more Americans who are unemployed - a lot more than that if you count hidden unemployment.
....
Today we still have the same amount of debt, but it belongs to governments. Normally debt would get destroyed and turn to air. Debt is a mistake between lender and borrower, and both should suffer. But the government is socializing all these losses by transforming them into liabilities for your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. What is the effect? The doctor has shown up and relieved the patient's symptoms - and transformed the tumour into a metastatic tumour. We still have the same disease. We still have too much debt, too many big banks, too much state sponsorship of risk-taking. And now we have six million more Americans who are unemployed - a lot more than that if you count hidden unemployment.
Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz calls it "socialism for the rich". So do many others.
Fascism?
Some, however, argue that the economy is more like fascism than socialism. For example, leading journalist Robert Scheer writes:
What is proposed is not the nationalization of private corporations but rather a corporate takeover of government. The marriage of highly concentrated corporate power with an authoritarian state that services the politico-economic elite at the expense of the people is more accurately referred to as "financial fascism" [than socialism]. After all, even Hitler never nationalized the Mercedes-Benz company but rather entered into a very profitable partnership with the current car company's corporate ancestor, which made out quite well until Hitler's bubble burst.
And Italian historian Gaetano Salvemini argued in 1936 that fascism makes taxpayers responsible to private enterprise, because "the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social" (page 416).
Remember that one of the best definitions of fascism - the one used by Mussolini - is the "merger of state and corporate power".
I heard that's apocriphal. Is that right? En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
So, the definition could have been apocryphal, it could have been fleeting, it could have been a sales pitch, it could have been viewed as a good thing or bad, dependent upon what he thought he needed to get and hold power.
I bow to others on this topic, but this sums up my understanding on what I have read. Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
Frank Delaney ~ Ireland
