Bribery, in the form of campaign contributions, and likely other emoluments in the form of steering jobs and work to friends of politicians, is not capitalism.
It’s actually socialism, in that market forces have been replaced by poltical forces. The entire economy is subsidizing a bad choice of goods and services. This choice, in fair and free market competition, would never have been made.
In its role as provider of the common defense, the USG allowing the Chinese solid-rocket booster secrets was treason, and again, a crime, and not something that is an economic question.
The USG, as customer, can direct a defense contractor to keep secrets and market their technology only to them, since what the USG is ordering is essentially custom engineering. ‘Allowing’ the Chinese to buy it from willing sellers, again, isn’t an economic question, since what was offered to the Chinese was custom work, not a product intended for authorized purchase on a retail defense arms market.
Clinton committed a crime, and he’s going to skate on it.
This has ZERO to do with economics.
All of the great economic crises in the last 20 years were touched off by the USG changing a regulation that was put in place because of the economic crises that came before it.
What is completely stupid about it was that the Long Term Capital Management collapse happened a year before Clinton signed the Glass-Steagall act repeal. He’s not completely to blame, in fact, it was Phil Gramm and Jim Leach that floated the bill in the first place.
The Glass-Steagall repeal was just the beginning of the ‘unlearning of hard historical lessons’.
Another boneheaded move by the USG was the ‘Mark to Market Ruling’. This allowed Enron to realize a capital gain on a major industrial development at the time the deal was booked, not at the time the development came on line.
This removed any motivation at all by Enron to actually ensure the development saw the light of day. “That was last year’s sale - I’ve already been compensated for it.”
Add some world class accounting fraud, faulty audits, and poor management and you had Enron.
And let’s not forget all the simple math that got thrown out the window at about that time with Fannie and Freddy.
The USG held a gun to the banks heads and said, “We want you to make more loans to minorities and the poor.”
Banks: “They can’t pay it back. We’ll be holding those loans on our books.”
USG: “We’ll back the loans with taxpayer dollars.”
Banks: “We have a plan - we’ll bundle it and sell it like we sold junk bonds in the 1980’s - high yield stuff - people will know what they are getting into.”
USG: “That’s no good, people are going to know that the average taxpayer is basically making loans to people who can’t pay it back.”
Banks: “Well, if you’re backing them, then wouldn’t those bonds carry the same rating as the USG, even if the loans in the package aren’t worth a dime?”
USG: “Warren, what say you? Willing to rate this crap as golden if the schmuck taxpayer is floating the tab? . . . “
Warren: (in the background) “ Easy Liz!! It’s viagra, not coke! (in the call) “Uuuh, yeah, sure. Let’s make some money and help some poor people out at the same time.”
USG: “You know, there’s just no end to doing good for the people of this great country.”
Lenin has NOTHING to do with it. This is all the USG. All of it. You ought to hear what they tell freshmen congressmen and senators when they get it:
“You can’t be on top of it all. You have to pick an area you are going to be as expert on as you can, and then you’re going to be our guy on it, and what you say about it is essentially going to influence in large member how the whole party is going to vote on it. It’s a team effort, and you’ll have to trust your teammates on the issues you aren’t an expert in.”
That’s how you get here. The blind leading the stupid, who in tern lead us. Mark Twain said this over a 100 years ago. All these guys were ever really good at was getting elected. What makes anyone think that just because they could get elected, they could also lead?