Please Stop Saying This Economic Crisis is a "Screw-Up"

[fascisthunter]

It's not...

"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years," he says, "to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

Grover Norquist


This economic crisis is a result of deliberate actions taken by the likes of many on the right who presently reside in our government today. Also, this isn't Socialism, although many want to turn the right wing anti-meme on it's head. Please refer to this as Fascism..... not socialism.

[lostnotforgotten]

1. Its All By Design!

"You have to realize that what they’re trying to do is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back the moral philosophy and social values of classical political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions. They’re not trying to make the economy more equal, and they’re not trying to share power. Their greed is (as Aristotle noted) infinite. So what you find to be a violation of traditional values is a re-assertion of pre-industrial, feudal values. The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage. The Road to Serfdom is not government sponsorship of economic progress and rising living standards, it’s the dismantling of government, the dissolution of regulatory agencies, to create a new feudal-type elite."

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3702.shtml

[mikehiggins]

3. So, Ayn Rand was right after all? She just blamed the wrong guys? n/t

[dgibby]

2. What you said! K&R nt

[Odin2005]

4. Time to take off the tin-foil hat.

This has little to do with some supposed grand conspiracy and everything to do with how using ideological fantasy instead of good sense f***s everything up. And Paulson seems like he would rather just print money then do anything helpful. :banghead:

[fascisthunter]

6. Believe what You Want... I've seen enough to make that Assumption

[dgibby]

10. Time for a PNAC/NWO refresher course! nt

[Two Americas]

18. tin foil hat!!

This is just laughable. Have you been watching the way this administration has acted? Paying any attention?

Oh, sure, all we needed was a little "good sense" and everything would have been fine.

Why this is still being debated here is a mystery to me. The average person on the street has caught on to the scam, but where are we as Democrats? Still beating up on our own, still denying reality, still calling them "tin foil."

The conspirators are clumsy and make mistakes, and are ideological fanatics, and are relentlessly - and successfully - following a plan to trash the Constitution and loot the public treasury. It is not an either/or. That is not a "grand conspiracy" theory, it is an observation of what they have been doing.

This is not merely a matter of getting rid of people who are incompetent or who have a certain ideology. Those are subplots, side shows. The ideology - the free market personal responsibility libertarian idiocy is as rampant here as it is among Republicans. And competency? They have successfully destroyed the Constitution and effected a massive transfer of wealth from the public into the hands of their cronies. Heckuva job, I would say.

[Odin2005]

23. What Libertarian ideology?

I hate libertarianism, and you post is an incoherent mess.

[judasdisney]

32. Odin2005 is using the same tired Neocon-style ridicule to shut down opinion

that is so popular all over DU.

Indeed, PNAC seems to be lost on such people. As well as famous conspiracies like Enron, Iran-Contra, BCCI, Inslaw, and millions of others that Poppy Bush had a hand in going back to Watergate, which was also a conspiracy.

Dunces who don't believe in conspiracies also don't believe in history. And they rely on ridicule to discourage truth.

[dansolo]

33. This has nothing to do with an ideological fantasy

These people don't force their economic theories because they believe they are ideologically superior. That is just justification to sell it to the masses. It is all just a setup to rob the treasury of our tax dollars. That is the same thing that we saw with privatization. On the surface, privatization (of government services) could possibly be made more cost effective. But once you start throwing in no-bid contracts and no oversight, the cost overruns increase dramatically, while the quality decreases. A truly free market theoretically could be very successful, but we have nothing of the sort. Instead we have the government serving the interests of individual industries or corporations, not the people.

[johnaries]

5. NO, it's Socialism not Fascism.

We were well on the road to Fascism, but this crisis switched the game. This is not what the neo-cons wanted. They wanted fascism. It blew up in their collective pig-faces.

[fascisthunter]

8. you think so..... seriously

tell me how this is socialism, and I mean no disrespect. If you mean socialism for the private sector, well that by definition with the aid of the government and tax payer is fascism. Tell me how it has backfired....?

[johnaries]

15. Because the government is taking over ownership.

What the neo-cons wanted was for the corporations to take over the government.

[judasdisney]

25. Both wrong, both right. There's a new hybrid in town. Socialized fascism.

In Communism, the State owns & controls the corporations.



In Fascism, the corporations own & control the State.



Capitalism is neutral, in between the two, and has zero connection to "democracy."



"Socialism" is an amorphous term denoting a point between Communism & Fascism in which Capitalism is permitted with State controls favoring socially-oriented redistribution of tax revenues.



The opposite of "Socialism," which would be an amorphous term denoting a point between Communism & Fascism in which Capitalism is deregulated, with laws favoring the privatization of the State and privately-oriented redistribution of tax revenues, is an economic definition that has no name.



What has happened does not favor socially-oriented redistribution of tax revenues, therefore it's not "socialism".

What has happened does not superficially denote corporate takeover of government, therefore it's not common "fascism".

However, if government was already owned by corporations (fascism, 2001-2008), and those corporations (failing or not) used their wholly-owned subsidiary government to "bailout" their excesses --

-- then yes, it's a new form of fascism that looks like socialism for the wealthy, but in reality, is simply the logical outcome of fascism.

And incidentally, PLEASE:

the REAL timebomb is derivatives.

One Q - U - A - D - R - I - L - L - I - O - N DOLLARS

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2817995.stm

http://www.freemarketnews.com/Linked-Commentary.asp?nid...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/IT-S-THE-DERIVATIVES-S...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_security

[judasdisney]

26. $1.14 Q-u-a-d-r-i-l-l-i-o-n $$$, you said?

One Q - U - A - D - R - I - L - L - I - O - N DOLLARS

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2817995.stm

http://www.freemarketnews.com/Linked-Commentary.asp?nid...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/IT-S-THE-DERIVATIVES-S...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_security

[Orsino]

14. Yep. If they'd only proceeded more slowly and carefully...

...they could have continued to fleece us for decades longer.

[Selatius]

7. It's a form of corporatism where government serves the corporate executives and the corporations.

In socialism, the government listens to the workers above all, not the employers. Ostensibly, the prerequisite for a functioning socialism is that the government possess democratic institutions. In theory, the workers would be heard most given their superior numbers to capitalists.

[fascisthunter]

9. Thank You for Such an Eloquent and Well Written Response

I understand what you just typed even with my pitiful knowledge. This is how I understood the difference between socialism and fascism.

[judasdisney]

30. If a bank is heisted by robbers wearing Ronald Reagan masks

and the robbers are the bank managers and FDIC chairmen, but the bank shareholders & FDIC chairmen get stuck with the bill, is it "socialism"? OR is it still a robbery?

[malaise]

12. Corporatism a la Mussolini

plain and simple. This is not socialism. Of course, to bad mouth socialism right wingers often called the Nazi model national socialism but it was never socialism.

[dgibby]

11. The next time we start a country,

could we please have a progressive, socialist democracy? Please?

[JustAnotherGen]

29. Maybe a dusted off

guillotine?

[Orsino]

13. It's a series of screw-ups.

No, it's not Norquist's master plan--he is probably scrambling now to secure his own fortune--but is, at its heart, emblematic of the plutocrats' SOP: extracting money from us rubes.

Rich men hire lobbyists to seek short-term gains, lobbyists pushed for dangerous deregulation, Congress accommodated them, and we kept electing the congresscritters who were failing us. Few of us along the way understood the risks involved, least of all the greedy assholes who started the current cycle of failure. They didn't want to kill the golden-egg-laying goose, nor even to come close as they have, because it puts them in the position of having to beg for their bail-outs. They would much prefer simply to keep making little gains at our expense.

This crash was inevitable, but it was not the hoped-for result.

[Two Americas]

16. no begging is going on

I can't believe that people are buying into this nonsense. "Oh, no, gee 'things' somehow went bad and no one knew. We have to do something, or 'things' will get even worse!! Let's give the crooks who caused the problem more of the public wealth, so they can 'save' us!!"

Have Democrats all bought into the free market insanity? Are we really to believe that the big players are hurting, and that they need our help, and that we should help them?

Saying that this was "not the hoped for result" is akin to saying that in an armed bank robbery the bank robbers would rather have their heist go smoothly, and should they have to shoot their way out that would be merely regrettable because it was "not the hoped for result." So what? And so what if some of the crooks got winged in the process of committing their crime? We are supposed to worry about them? That is truly insanity.

[Orsino]

17. Plenty of begging is going on.

Our plutocrat rulers have lost some prestige and power, and are dependent upon Congress and the president. This is a bit of an inversion, and not what they really wanted.

(edit: should have said "partially dependent")

[Two Americas]

19. poor babies

They have lost some prestige and power. Prestige with whom? And why would they care about that? They have never cared about what people think of them - to an extreme. What power has been lost? We are the ones who have been steadily losing power. Where did this power they are supposedly losing go? Who has it now?

The president and congress are owned by the plutocrats, the plutocrats are not dependent upon the politicians.

No one who manufactured this crisis is going to be hurt. They are going to come out ahead. Just watch.

[Orsino]

20. You need to ask?

They have lost their prestige with us, the ones who historically line up to be fleeced. America's cult of the CEO has lost some of its gleam in the past week. Our love affair with the rich and famous is endangered by our deeper-seated need to assign blame in a crisis, hence their rush to get their bail-out settled while we are still heating the tar. For the first time in a long while, they are begging for help rather than issuing decrees. Few of them are in danger of starving, but they are not used to getting less than they want, and it frightens them. The vague specter of being poor, or the very real possibility of being less rich, frightens them.

"Hurt" is a relative term. We're the ones who will lose roofs, meals and jobs, but that has never scared them before. They're afraid of losing power over us--even a little.

[Two Americas]

22. not sure about that

I am not so sure that "prestige" is what con men are looking for from their marks. "Confusion" and "paralysis" and "compliance" would be more like it, and there is an awful lot of those things being promoted right here.

"Begging for help?" Hardly. Do we have the option of saying no? Not if many here and in Congress have their way, we don't. "Pulling a fast one" is more like it, not "begging for help."

[Odin2005]

24. Exactly!

IMO the corporate system's fatal flaw is that next quarter's profits become more important them long term viability of the company and the economy as a whole. This short-term thinking is causes them to, as you said, kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Companies in Europe and (especially) Japan are MUCH better at thinking in the long term then we are, that is why Toyota is on top while the big 3 us car-makers are struggling.

[judasdisney]

31. Disagree. Somebody somewhere has profited handsomely from this fiasco

and many, many people saw it coming and warned about it, like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and dozens of economists & pundits.

The Norquist crowd know exactly what they're doing.

And it hasn't even started. The REAL TIMEBOMB is derivatives.

One Q - U - A - D - R - I - L - L - I - O - N DOLLARS

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2817995.stm

http://www.freemarketnews.com/Linked-Commentary.asp?nid...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/IT-S-THE-DERIVATIVES-S...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_security

[Fly by night]

21. Agree. That's like saying that vote-flipping electronic voting machines are plagued by "glitches".

That's only true if "glitch" is short for "GOP lying bitch".

It's time to take our country back and send all these mofos to Argentina to sing in the beer halls with their political progenitors.

[JustAnotherGen]

27. Agreed - Fascism

I called it on Friday morning at another board. This is Fascism. Problem is? I'm not willing to lock step and goose step with the plan . . .

[ColbertWatcher]

28. Well said. Thank you. k+r, n/t