Company seizure? That's FASCISM!
Posted on 10/26/2009 3:56:10 AM PDT by myknowledge
Legislation to be introduced in Congress will make it easier for the US government to seize control of troubled financial institutions that are considered too big to be allowed to fail, The New York Times says.
The bill will be introduced in Congress by a key ally of President Barack Obama - Representative Barney Frank - who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, the Times said, citing a senior administration official.
The legislation would make it easier for the government to throw out the financial company's management, wipe out the shareholders and change the terms of existing loans held by the institution, the report said.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was planning to endorse the changes in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday, the paper noted.
The White House plan, as outlined so far, would make the existence of a large financial company whose failure would put the US financial system and the economy at risk much costlier, the report said.
It would force such institutions to hold more money in reserve and make it harder for them to borrow too heavily against their assets, The Times said.
Setting up the equivalent of living wills for corporations, the plan would also require that companies come up with their own procedure to be disentangled in the event of a crisis, the paper said.
This plan, according to administration officials, ought to be made public in advance, said The Times.
"These changes will impose market discipline on the largest and most interconnected companies," the paper quotes Michael Barr, assistant treasury secretary for financial institutions, as saying.
One of the biggest changes the plan would make, he said, is that instead of being controlled by creditors, the process will be controlled by the government.
Some regulators and economists in recent weeks have suggested that the administration's plan does not go far enough, The Times noted. They say that the government should consider breaking up the biggest banks and investment firms long before they fail, or at least impose strict limits on their trading activities - steps that the administration continues to reject.
Company seizure? That's FASCISM!
Sieg Heil!
Just say "Banking Queen"...
The ultimate goal is for the government to have control of all of the means of production. See the communist manifesto.
This is socialism. This is far, far worse.
Ooops, I meant this is NOT socialism.
We,the People, are getting the change so many wanted.
Smiley Faced Facism?
As Scooby would say: whrut-whrow
The ultimate goal is for the corporations to retain the means of production but the decision-making rests in the hands of the government. In other words, fusion of corporation and state. This is Fascism.
Unlike communism, fascism was a very successful economic model besides capitalism. It worked successfully under Hitler's Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Fascist Italy, and to this day, under Japan since WWII.
So I figure fascism would work successfully under Obama's America.
Anyway, fascism will be the new world order's political and economic model.
The result is less money supply, higher interest rates, lower economic activity and fewer loans to less credit-worthy borrowers (e.g., minorities). How would Bwaney square this circle?
This is fascism. Fascism is a means of organizing an economy where the government allows private ownership of the means of production while the government suspends the rule of law and forces corporations to bend to the government’s whims.
Japan is officially a dirigiste economy, not that different from the rest of the developed world. Dirigiste economies regularly divert resources away from rational use and to that which the government favors through subsidies, regulations, cronyism, etc. A dirigiste economy can be described as fascism light as there remains a semblance of the rule of law.
Given the short run that both Fascist Italy and Germany had, I think it’s hard to say fascism was a “successful economic model.”
Spain under Franco had something similar, and while there was a brief period after the Spanish Civil War during which it stabilized Spanish economic life, it was not at all successful after that. Spanish economic life was bogged down by vertical unions, cronyism (an inevitable feature of fascism) and protectionism. It was made worse by the fact that the desire of US leftists (through Democrats in Congress) to punish Spain for not having fallen to the Communists during its Civil War meant that the US was very stingy with its economic aid after WWII. In response, Spain adopted autarchy, which meant that most everything it used had to be produced within its own borders.
Facism undermines the entire rationale of capitalism and its own control systems, so while it may run briefly on the left-overs of the capitalism it has invaded and taken over, I don’t think you could point to a successful long-term fascist country.
Wrong answer. If a company is "too big to fail", but it's losing money, let it die. It will be replaced by a number of smaller, better run companies, none of which will be too big to fail or in danger of failing. Why meddle when Adam Smith's invisible hand will solve the problem perfectly?
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