I'm like a good 4-5 days late with this, but better late than never. So I was looking at the NY Times the other day and came across this article. Here’s an excerpt:
WASHINGTON — Having tried without success to unlock frozen credit markets, the Treasury Department is considering taking ownership stakes in many United States banks to try to restore confidence in the financial system, according to government officials.
Treasury officials say the just-passed $700 billion bailout bill gives them the authority to inject cash directly into banks that request it. Such a move would quickly strengthen banks’ balance sheets and, officials hope, persuade them to resume lending. In return, the law gives the Treasury the right to take ownership positions in banks, including healthy ones.
Hey isn’t this what I was talking about a few weeks ago?
I mean f’ing A, I didn’t think this would actually happen….
I did a bit of poking around and found the form of socialism I was talking about, according to Wikipedia, is called social interventionism:
...an ideology which involves the intervention of a government or an organization in social affairs.[1] Such policies can include provision of charity or social welfare as a means to alleviate social and economic problems of people facing financial difficulties; provision of health care; provision of education; provision of safety regulations for employment and products; delivery of food aid or recovery missions to regions or countries negatively affected by an event; adoption programs; etc.
To be fair, this may not necessarily be a bad thing--especially since it seems that the world economy is suffering now too.
I guess the real question is, if the government does nationalize the banking system, how much of a free market do we truly live in?
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