Troika of Bolsheviks
Nouriel Roubini, a former Cassandra now widely regarded as a presient sage -- the "Dr. Doom" we recently blogged - has just published an article about the US government rescue of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, effectively the biggest nationalisation in history.
This has effects that can be seen through a tax justice lens, as he explains.
"Comrades Bush, Paulson and Bernanke have now turned the USA into the USSRA (the United Socialist State Republic of America). Socialism is indeed alive and well in America; but this is socialism for the rich, the well connected and Wall Street. A socialism where profits are privatized and losses are socialized with the US tax-payer being charged the bill of $300 billion.
Which underlines the fact that TJN is on the side of the taxpayer. Roubini continues:
"This biggest bailout and nationalization in human history comes from the most fanatically and ideologically zealot free-market laissez-faire administration in US history. These are the folks who for years spewed the rhetoric of free markets and cutting down government intervention in economic affairs. But they were so fanatically ideological about free markets that they did not realize that financial and other markets without proper rules, supervision and regulation are like a jungle where greed – untempered by fear of loss or of punishment – leads to credit bubbles and asset bubbles and manias and eventual bust and panics.
Comrades Bush and Paulson and Bernanke will rightly pass to the history books as a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the USSRA."
These are the kinds of truths which would have until very recently caused their authors to be branded as fringe lunatics, but are now being embraced wholesale by mainstream economists. The times they are a-changin'.
This has effects that can be seen through a tax justice lens, as he explains.
"Comrades Bush, Paulson and Bernanke have now turned the USA into the USSRA (the United Socialist State Republic of America). Socialism is indeed alive and well in America; but this is socialism for the rich, the well connected and Wall Street. A socialism where profits are privatized and losses are socialized with the US tax-payer being charged the bill of $300 billion.
Which underlines the fact that TJN is on the side of the taxpayer. Roubini continues:
"This biggest bailout and nationalization in human history comes from the most fanatically and ideologically zealot free-market laissez-faire administration in US history. These are the folks who for years spewed the rhetoric of free markets and cutting down government intervention in economic affairs. But they were so fanatically ideological about free markets that they did not realize that financial and other markets without proper rules, supervision and regulation are like a jungle where greed – untempered by fear of loss or of punishment – leads to credit bubbles and asset bubbles and manias and eventual bust and panics.
Comrades Bush and Paulson and Bernanke will rightly pass to the history books as a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the USSRA."
These are the kinds of truths which would have until very recently caused their authors to be branded as fringe lunatics, but are now being embraced wholesale by mainstream economists. The times they are a-changin'.
posted by TJN at 4:25 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home