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The idea being trumpeted about by the financial correspondents, market pundits, and economically conservative talking heads is that somehow Bush, in buying out AIG, has taken on the banner of Hugo Chavez. That somehow this corporate welfare is a massive victory for and move towards an imagined economic left.
There is not even a grain of truth to this. This bailout and buy out has as much to do socialism as the Tsar bolstering against the collapse of the Faberge egg market.
For starters let us ask what it is that we have ‘nationalized?’ What industry has been purchased for the benefit of we the taxpayers?
And the answer is… Yes, you guessed it. Debt!
That is all we have purchased, nothing but debt. This isn’t a real industry or resource that will benefit tax payers in any way; it’s a big fat stinking stack of IOU’s. There is nothing productive or profitable that we as the taxpayers now own.
It is not a railway, not a mine, not a factory, not a chain of supermarkets, not a fleet of trucks, or an oil well. It isn’t even a clinic or a stack of I pods. It is the largest insurance company in the world that has found itself in an absurd amount of debt and us lucky taxpayers bought up the right to pay it off.
Anything else is a goddamn Wednesday evening economic bullshit tv show lie.
What about the basic tennents of socialism?
Well if the level limit of socialism that you believe in is merely big bad government owning something (as the Friedmanites seem want to believe) than it still doesn’t qualify. Sure the government owns 80% of the stock as part of a buy out deal but this isn’t really the collective ownership of property or goods or capital. How do I know this?
Simple. AIG is still being traded on the stock market. That’s right there are still shares available to be sold or purchased. And mark my words, the profit takers are going to be there when the government resells this stock (debt free whoopee!!) at a reduced price for all the fat cats to soak up again.
Even some lefties are taking great pleasure in calling this corporate communism. Well I have to half disagree with them as well. As much fun as it is to call capitalists ‘commies’ it is not accurate. A great privatization has occurred in this buyout. While the buyout may have a touch of ‘Eau De Marx,’ this cloying odor is meant to cover for the aforementioned stinking pile of debt. The paying off of this debt is the opposite of communism where massive resources of this country as a nation will be transferred into the hands of the private interests that AIG owes money to.
I would further ask the following commie bonus questions:
Where are the workers that are seizing the engines of this industry? Whose needs are being served and whose abilities are being tapped? Where is the shared collective benefit?
This isn’t communism. It is the same old unregulated-let the taxpayer hold the bag crony feudalism we have been grumbling through for years now.
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