According to
Matt Taibbi's Must Read article, as a result of the financial stabilization process the federal government has been turned
into one gigantic, half-opaque holding company, one whose balance sheet includes the world's most appallingly large and risky hedge fund, a controlling stake in a dying insurance giant, huge investments in a group of teetering megabanks, and shares here and there in various auto-finance companies, student loans, and other failing businesses. Like AIG, this new federal holding company is a firm that has no mechanism for auditing itself and is run by leaders who have very little grasp of the daily operations of its disparate subsidiary operations.
But who owns who? Some people say that the government is nationalizing the banks. To me it looks like the banks have
privatized the US government to meet their cash flow needs. Being too big to fail and too complex to untangle, US government, and it's tax-payer assets, is now effectively owned by the mega-financial institutions. The government allows the continued employment of the people who caused this mess, because these are some of the few people on the planet who understand how to untangle the web of shaky financial instruments they've created. The government seems
powerless to reverse this relationship.
Tell me we the tax payer are
not on the hook to stabilize these corporations, and I'll reverse my statement about the US government being privatized .... I'm afraid the die has been cast. So, that leads to an unnerving conclusion.
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Lets not tolerate it.
Psssst... Do Something
On May 6, 1935, Pres. Roosevelt signed executive order 7034 creating the largest public works program in history. The Works Progress Administration created 8.5 million jobs during the Depression of the 1930s.
