Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Corporate Socialism


You, my dear readers, might have noticed that I've been relatively silent on the financial meltdown that we are currently in the midst of. In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that it is because most of this stuff is over my head. Perhaps the only affinity I have with John McCain, is that I also don't know as much about economics as much as I should. I blame this on my own shortcomings and supply side doctrinaire professors that taught me voodoo economics back in college. However, I'm not running for president. John McCain is. Anyways, I'm getting off on a tangent here. I titled this post corporate socialism because lately we've seen a lot of government nationalization of business, particularly in the financial sector. I think the irony of this is lost on a lot of people. A deeply conservative, radical free-market, Republican administration has been nationalizing (at least partially) corporations left and right! I wrote a somewhat sarcastic post about AIG last week, but just think about it, we as taxpayers own a 80% of AIG, the largest private insurer in the world! Or to put it in more socialistic terms, the state controls an 80% stake in AIG. Isn't that crazy! Wow! If you'd like to learn a little bit more about the crisis, and some ideas on what to do about it; I'd recommend reading the blogs of Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, and Dean Baker. You should also check out this report by the Center for American Progress on Paulson's proposed $700 billion bailout plan.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user grahamlyth July 20, 2008