SOCIALIZE LOSSES, PRIVATIZE PROFITS.

In a post from last August, “CAPITALISM WITHOUT FINANCIAL FAILURE IS NOT CAPITALISM AT ALL, BUT A KIND OF SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH”, the Author noted the following:

There is a phrase circulating in moderate to liberal economic circles that the last twenty years, especially the last seven years, have been a period where the government privatizes profits and socializes losses. Crony capitalism is endemic to the Bush administration and the Bush war in Iraq. And the taxpayer takes the hindmost. Odd, isn’t it, that the Author, an economic conservative and a social liberal/radical is attacking a far right administration from the right.

WALL STREET WELFARE

E.J. Dionne writes in yesterday’s Washington Post, in “The Street on Welfare”:

Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.

The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. They are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence, and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard. They have lost "confidence" in each other, you see, because none of these oh-so-wise captains of the universe have any idea what kinds of devalued securities sit in one another's portfolios.

IF YOU CANNOT FAIL, OR IF THE TAXPAYERS WILL SUBSIDIZE YOUR FAILURES, YOU WILL NOT CARE.

And this from the author’s post from January 19, 2005, “The Importance of Being Wrong Occasionally”:

IF YOU CAN AFFORD YOUR MISTAKES, CAN YOU EVER BE WRONG?

But there are some in this world that continually make mistakes with few if any consequences. Paris Hilton comes promptly to mind. Two such people from the cannon of American literature also come to mind. Tom and Daisy Buchanan of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” are the prototypical scions of the idle rich. Remember what Nick Carraway said near the end of the book and the 1974 movie of the same title of Tom and Daisy?

“Careless people [Tom and Daisy]… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together…”

But in the end, it was their money that gave them retreat. It paid for their vast carelessness. It was the Faustian bargain they struck. The money was the unspoken “whatever” that kept them together.

This is a rhetorical question, to be sure. Someone usually pays when a mistake is made. Nearly always the one in error and usually a bystander, or two, or two hundred. Or two hundred thousand. But when someone can retreat into their money, their family connections, their networks of sycophants and cronies, can such a person ever make a mistake? Will that lesson never taught produce a pupil never schooled? Probably so.

“ANYONE ELSE, I’D SAY THIS WOULD BE A LESSON”

In the classic film “Citizen Kane”, political boss Jim Gettys threatens to expose Kane’s tryst with his lover unless Kane drops out of the race for New York Governor. Kane refuses and Gettys goes public with the story of Kane’s extramarital affair. Gettys tells Kane “Anyone else, I’d say this would be a lesson”.

Kane goes on to loose the election, divorce his wife and marry his lover. But Charles Foster Kane is not just “anyone else”. Kane kept his vast wealth and control over a financial empire built in the Gilded Age and large enough to ride out the impending Great Depression.

THEY LOSE IT LIKE THEY STOLE IT. LIKELY THEY DID. BUT NOT FROM THE DESERT OF THE REAL!