The rationale for the federal bailout plan is that these companies are too huge, too intertwined in so many areas of the economy, to risk them going under. It's like the Italian government saying that the Mafia is too big and thus too important to the Italian economy (read: jobs, contribution$) to let them fail, so we'll just prop them up, look the other way while the looting and violence takes place, and roll along on our merry way.
Yes, of course, these corporations are huge, sprawling, multi-headed behemoths, but the politicians never want to examine how they got to the point of untouchability. How many times have we seen how deregulating industry has resulted in economic and/or social disaster? Anybody remember Enron? The S&L collapse of the '80s (in which a compromised McCain was right in the middle, by the way)? And now Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? And Lehman Brothers? And AIG? And Morgan Stanley? Et al.
The ghost of the 1930s Great Depression is hovering over the present crisis. Indeed, so fast is the house of cards tumbling down, with more major corporations expected to follow, that the politicians, regardless of party, are falling all over themselves to create an institutional feather cushion to catch these failing enterprises as they crash toward insolvency. These are socialism-like measures, as was true in FDR's New Deal days as well, designed to forestall another Great Depression and maybe even revolution. Except these socialist-seeming solutions are not designed to aid the bulk of the population, the middle-class and poor, but to provide aid and sustenance to the wealthy titans of industry. The rest of us will be expected to pay the bill, probably more than a trillion dollars when all is said and done, since the plan also may include bailing out troubled foreign banks who dived into the giant profit-making machine in the U.S. (This massive federal bailout is being considered at the same time when the cost for America's current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is approaching the trillion-dollar mark.)
...Great writing.
No comments:
Post a Comment