Half-Assed Capitalism

That is what we have in this country, a form of half-assed capitalism. Or, if you prefer, socialism for the rich and powerful.

If you start a business and it fails, you have to eat the losses. If you bought a house and financed it and then you fall on hard times, the bank will take the house back and that's just your hard luck.

But if you are a big enough corporation, if you get into trouble because of your own stupid management, then the Feds will ride to your rescue. The Federal government, which is to say, the American taxpayers, will prop you up. If you survive, you get to keep the profits. If you go bust, the taxpayers will eat the costs of that. Hell, if you go into bankruptcy, you can screw your employees and dump their pensions onto the taxpayers (after you, of course, had previously raided the pension fund) and then come out of bankruptcy.

Bear Sterns got into trouble and the Feds kept them from failing. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have gone south and the Feds bailed them out.

And now here come the auto companies, which are in trouble because all they can make are gas-guzzling pieces of shit, to ask for Federal money so they can do research and development on fuel-efficient vehicles. They want $25 billion in loan guarantees, so they can do the R&D that those short-sighted bastards have been unwilling to seriously do. Unlike, say, the Japanese carmakers, who have been doing the work all along. GM and Ford got so sucked into trying to please the stock analysts, who only give a fuck about current earnings, that they neglected to do any serious planning for the day gas prices went over $1.50 a gallon.

I can understand the public policy arguments for all of these actions. But none of them sit right with me. If we, as the American taxpayers, are going to bail these fuckers out, part of the price of that should be a hefty chunk of stock in those companies, so that some of the future profits flow back to the Treasury. Why should we be the ones to assume only the risk? If those companies want to play at socialism, then let's play. They can become partly owned by the government.