The New Socialist/Fascists, Or Our One-Dimensional Stupidity

It is difficult to understand the arcane world that is Wall Street; indeed, it boggles the mind to think that those neo-robber barons (the pseudo capitalists) are once again sucking huge "salaries" from the financial system they so recently bought down with their unregulated excesses. But, make no mistake about it, that's the news coming out of Wall Street these days. The big salaries are back! Are we destined to suffer interminably? Are we incapable of learning?

The answers to these and similar questions are disturbing to say the least. Many of us on the Left have heard and continue to hear commentaries extolling the virtues of the capitalist system and how all the recent talk of government regulation threatens the dawn of a socialist state. Never mind that a free enterprise capitalist system of the type lionized by the Ron Pauls of this world has never existed. No, the Robber Barons have had there hand in the public cash register from the beginning. They've helped our government constructed an economic system that socializes corporate losses and conversely privatizes profits.


And having done that, that is socialize their losses by placing them on the public tab, they also managed to convince the lunch box Joes of this world that his poor neighbor down the street, welfare Molly, is spending her checks on Corvets from GM and living the good life. All of which was used as a pretext to slash welfare spending and to put those lazy bastards to work.

Now it should go without saying, but maybe not, so I’ll say it. . .all this talk about the new socialism that’s about to dawn on the horizon, coupled with talk from the same people about the neo-fascist nature of the Obama Administration completely eludes me, as, I trust it does most thinking people. In scholarly circles Communism and Fascism are considered, in simple, terms as opposite ends of the political continuum. Not so in this new Republican/Right Wing calculus; they’re right there together as identical twins and evil little bastards at that–you know, bad seed types.

We need a new photographer; there's something radically wrong with this picture. I’m inclined to agree with views Nobel Prize Economist Paul Krugman expressed in his NY Times column today:

“[T]here’s no longer any reason to believe that the wizards of Wall Street actually contribute anything positive to society, let alone enough to justify those humongous paychecks.

Remember that the gilded Wall Street of 2007 was a fairly new phenomenon. From the 1930s until around 1980 banking was a staid, rather boring business that paid no better, on average, than other industries, yet kept the economy’s wheels turning.”


Importantly Krugman notes, “Wall Street is no longer, in any real sense, part of the private sector. It’s a ward of the state, every bit as dependent on government aid as recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a k a welfare.”

I also agree whole heartedly with Krugman’s conclusion; he wrote, “. . . given all that taxpayer money on the line, financial firms should be acting like public utilities, not returning to the practices and paychecks of 2007.”


Perhaps Herbert Marcuse was right, our one-dimensional nature condemns us to stupidity. . . .the great masses end up supporting programs and policies inimical to their own best interests; policies that so clearly favor the people on top of the social order. Let us not forget that the great communicator, President Reagan, the guy who sold the bogus notion that government is the problem not the solution, cruised into office on waves of support from those very unionized factory workers whose interests he so clearly opposed. The current government/economic turmoil is a direct legacy of the Great Bull Shiter's ability to turn incredibly complex issues into mind numbing idiocy.


Update: New York Times, 14 July 2009, Bob Herbert

These malefactors of great wealth (thank you, Teddy) developed hideously destructive credit policies and took insane risks that hurt millions of American families and nearly wrecked the economy. Then they were bailed out with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, money that came from the very people victimized by the industry’s outlandish practices.

Now the industry is fighting against creation of an agency that would protect taxpayers and ordinary consumers from a similarly devastating onslaught in the future. And at the same time they are scrambling to raise credit card interest rates and all manner of exploitive fees to build a brand new superstructure of questionable profits on the backs of the taxpayers who came to their rescue.

Ever on the watch,

Davy Crockett