Wall Street Socialism Meets Disaster Capitalism

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Posted on Jul 15, 2008

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were always more foul than fish, says Robert Borosage, and the bailout announced by the Treasury secretary over the weekend will mean “private speculators, having driven the stock down, will clean up on the upside.”

HUFFINGTON POST:

Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac are only the most recent and extreme version of Wall Street socialism. The Bush administration has done essentially the same for private providers of college loans. The Federal Reserve has made taxpayers the guarantor not simply of the banks that it regulates, but the shadow banking system of hedge funds and investment houses that it doesn’t regulate. After the bailout of Bear Sterns, they basically are gambling with our money. The Federal Reserve has now traded more than $500 billion in federal bonds for the toxic paper of private banks and investment houses, some $200 billion of it in mortgage backed securities, worth dimes on the dollar. This massive subsidy—justified as necessary to keep the banking system afloat—is not accompanied by limits on what gambles the speculators can make, how much debt they can take on, what rewards they can pocket. They are playing with house money—not exactly an incentive for prudence
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TAGS: bailout bush capitalism disaster capitalism fannie mae freddie mac naomi klein robert borosage socialism treasury secretary. wall street wall street socialism

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By webbedouin, July 16, 2008 at 9:02 pm Link to this comment

If you are lower or middle classed based, Bush pretty much screwed up everything.

However if you are a member of the socialist elite, the fed can’t print currency fast enough to keep you fat & happy.

But really, the deregulation set off by Reagun’s economic policies are finally coming into fruition.  Soon we will find that all markets have been manipulated, the upper class has robbed us blind and the dollar is worthless.

My favorite line of the week was to the effect that, “we have to act to make naked short selling illegal!!!”  (Hint: it always has been…)

Not only have we been deregulated, the regulators that were left, didn’t do their job.

Have a nice day…

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By joey, July 16, 2008 at 7:35 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Bush-o-nomics has the same feel and smell as Bush-o-war and Bush-o-last7years. Can Bush-o-slugg do anything correctly?

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