[JasonC]

I would venture to say I know as much about American conservatism as any man living. And being readily disconcerted isn't a sign of maturity or judgment. Of course I understand that lots of you are in denial about the state of the economy and how much corporate leaders have capitulated, that private markets simply refuse to allocate capital and voluntarily give that role to the government instead. I understand that this practical reality fails to fit your Reagan-era view of the world, to such an extent that you cannot wrap your minds around it and move on. But that isn't conservatism, it is just your own lack of imagination, understanding, and practical realism. It is, in fine, your ideological utopianism, which is emphatically not a conservative trait.

"But I want the private sector to decide" this that and the other. Sure. Well, here is what the private sector has decided - capital entrusted to the US treasury, 2%; capital entrusted to US banks, 12%. Capital entrusted to General Motors, 40% with no volume. The private market *refuses* to hand over allocation decisions to *other* private-market actors. But is entirely willing to let the US treasury do it.

Your approval of that fact, your bare recognition of that fact, is not required for it to be a fact. And the dominant, operative fact at this present moment in US economic affairs.

That being the case, the Federal Reserve and the US treasury are in charge of the survival and the success of capitalism. The private sector *gave it up* six months ago.

The Federal Reserve and the US treasury, yes even under Obama, desires the continued existence of capitalism. Capitalism will survive and in no great span of years it will once again prosper. That is its nature and its genius, that it can rise from the dead and adapt. But no, you cannot ensure that survival by insisting that it has already happened. It hasn't.

It is *normal* that the government support private industry and private finance in the smash. It has been that way since the 1600s, as long as there has been modern finance and modern capitalism. Your ideological utopias being too narrow in time, too limited in historical sense, too formulaic and not empirical enough about the messy practicalities of our true history, are *your* problem.

So no, screaming that socialism is upon us and all is doomed, when the Fed and treasury are in the act of saving capitalism from one of its periodic, self inflicted fits of madness, isn't going to win you anything. It isn't a true diagnosis of what is happening, it counsels all the wrong policies (because entirely unworkable), it refuses to face facts, and it is far too mired in a mere passing episode that will soon be forgotten by everyone other than the hyperventilators peddling right now.

The author is right. You need to *calm*. *Down*.

[fr_freak]

Well, here is what the private sector has decided - capital entrusted to the US treasury, 2%; capital entrusted to US banks, 12%. Capital entrusted to General Motors, 40% with no volume. The private market *refuses* to hand over allocation decisions to *other* private-market actors. But is entirely willing to let the US treasury do it.

Who says I am happy about that either? I do not just object to Obama taking control of GM, I objected to GM asking for a handout to begin with, and Obama and the Dem Congress (and Bush and a number of Republicans) agreeing. GM should have been allowed to fail. If no actor in the private sector was willing to capitalize that company, it should have been in bankruptcy months ago, perhaps even years ago.

The bottom line is that there are some principles of government which should be maintained always, even if it costs us periodic economic pain. Sacrificing those principles for economic stability will only result in loss of freedoms on levels other than the economy. I am aware that the US government has increased its meddling in our economic system since the Great Depression, but as I was not around in the twenties and thirties to stop it, I don't see how I can accept any blame for my blindness at that time.

It has been that way since the 1600s, as long as there has been modern finance and modern capitalism.

It has been that way in countries other than the US since that time, but the atmosphere that allowed that to occur was part of the reason many people fled to to the New World, and why the colonists rebelled against England. That as a factor in the US economy is a much, much more recent phenomenon. Why you would use it as a basis for justifying Obama's and Congress's actions now is a mystery to me.