The US economy is collapsing and it looks like at least a trillion dollars will be spent in bailouts of companies that essentially put all their money on a three-legged horse and are now crying their eyes out until the gov't reimburses them.
Is action necessary? Yes.
Should those responsible be held accountable and the rescued companies be obligated to return taxpayer money eventually? In an ideal world, yes. But if in the real world it's a choice of punish the guilty
or head off a recession then there's only one choice. Whatever the situation, the priority has to be to fend off economic collapse.
Is the plan on the table the best way to go about it? I'm no economist and can't say. Krugman has been right about most things and he agrees with it; other economists say it's madness.
Is the bail-out socialism (a welfare state) for the ultra-rich? You could call it that, although socialism is not a synonym for communism. Or you could call it fascism (which would be correct). Or you could call it communism (which would also be correct).
Dr Lawrence Britt came up with
14 definining characteristics of fascism by comparing various fascist regimes. But if you study it you'll realize that most of the 14 characteristics are common to tyrannical dictatorships of any flavour throughout history. On the surface, only two of those 14 characteristics appear to distinguish fascism from communism. But upon closer inspection there is no difference.
Point 8,
the use of religion, appears to distinguish fascism from communism. "Those godless commies" has been a common refrain for a century. And we know that Wehrmacht soldiers in WWII had belt buckles which said
Gott mit uns (God is with us). Case closed, right? Wrong. Hitler (and Dubya) both represented themselves as speaking
for God, but Lenin, Stalin and Mao were essentially
regarded as Gods. The words of Lenin, Stalin and Mao were treated with the same sort of reverence as religious texts and their authority was unquestionable—they spoke
ex cathedra.
Point 9,
corporate power being protected, appears to distinguish fascism from communism. After all, as the quote has it, Benito Mussolini stated that "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." Depending upon which source you look at, either Mussolini originated that, or he stole it, or he never said it. It doesn't really matter. In communism the state "controlled the means of production" (the government ran the big corporations) and in fascism the big corporations were effectively in charge of the government. In either case it is (as Mussolini may or may not have said) the
merger of state and corporate power.
The only
real difference between communism and fascism is the fairy tale used to justify a tyrranical dictatorship to the populace.
Both appeal to the working classes (who are more numerous and therefore the determining factor in an election) in different ways. You may think, if you only know of the Mussolini quote/not-quote, that fascism made it's appeal to the rich—the full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers Party; the Republicans continue to convince the gullible that "a rising tide floats all ships." In reality the people who control, and benefit from, fascism/communism are neither the heads of state or the heads of corporations but the international bankers.
Prescott Bush, Dubya's grandfather, supported Hitler in WWII and worked with Hitler's industrialists even after the US entered WWII. In his defence he might have argued that the Constitution defined treason as "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" and he wasn't
giving it, he was
selling it. Congress cut off that line of defence by passing the "Trading with the Enemy" act. Prescott carried on regardless. Gov't investigators found out about Prescott's German operations and shut them down (but didn't say anything until after the war was over for fear of damaging morale). But the gov't didn't find
all of Prescott's German operations, and he
continued to run those that hadn't been discovered. Prescott had earlier tried to arrange a fascist coup to unseat FDR by using military force.
So if you're thinking of this current bail-out plan as socialist, it's not. It's the culmination of Dubya's grandfather's fascist dream. Which you can call a communist dream if you wish, because the two are basically identical in all that counts (which is who gets rich by it). If you don't see this, it probably still strikes you as odd that the arch-neocons such as Wolfowitz started out as devout communists and apparently changed their spots by becoming fascists. Same spots, different label.
Why have I written all this? Because the bail-out plan, as currently drafted, tells me we're all fucked if it's adopted. It gives the treasury secretary the power to give money to any damned company he wants at
his discretion. That
removes the power of the purse from Congress, which constitutionally is a no-no. The treasury secretary's decisions in this regard are
not subject to judicial review. That actually is constitutional because Congress is permitted to put specific legislation beyond judicial review. I don't know if that has ever happened before but that clause of the Constitution should never have been put in. However, the same draft bail-out plan also puts the treasury secretary's actions beyond Congressional review. That's definitely unconstitutional because one of the key obligations of Congress is oversight of the executive branch.
If this draft bill goes ahead, Congress will have (unconstitutionally) signed over most of its powers to the executive branch. It's already signed away a lot of them by refusing to impeach and ignoring presidential "signing statements" stating simply that Bush refuses to comply with legislation. But this one will be the final straw. The "power of the purse" is the last piece of constitutional power that Congress retains over the Executive. Once this is passed then the Treasury Sec can spend any amount of money the President wants on any damned thing the President wants (really, it's that broad).
Wake up and smell the jackboots.
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