blog.theamigan.net: Making sense of sense since yesterday.

Posts Tagged ‘bailout’

Nationalization

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Today I will be writing about nationalization. Again.

But this time, it’s not about banks and insurance firms. It’s about automakers, specifically GM.

With news that Detriot could “potentially be forced to seek relief under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code” without further government help, nationalization is starting to look like the lesser of many evils to some.

I say go for it, if GM truly is so important to the economy (which it is). They’re using government funds. Why should we trust (mis)management of this money to the very people whose initial failure prompted the bailout in the first place? Like I said in my last post, at least the government is intrinsically accountable to the American people, though whether this is the case in practice is obviously up for debate. Really, one of the few obstacles to such nationalization is all the rednecks who will cry “Communism!” if it happens. But here’s a hint: just because Cuba did something to every company back in the 50s doesn’t mean that we can’t do it to monumentally mismanaged automakers whose survival is effectively a keystone of much of our economy.

This is about a government protecting its citizens from financial hardship which largely came about through no fault of their own. It’s not about any sort of doctrine, or any systematic overthrow of a government, or any of that bullshit. But it just goes to show you what happens when you put the mice in charge of guarding the cheese. The executives fucked up. This fucking up endangers the financial stability of millions of people. They should not be allowed to continue doing this, and especially not while taking home a pretty penny for it.

Think about it.

Snow day!

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

We’ve gotten at least 8 inches so far, and it’s still coming down. RIC morning classes are cancelled, for one. This is something I am not entirely sad about.

In other news, AIG posted a record US corporate loss…and still is asking for a $30bn standby line of credit. AIG CEO Edward Liddy was on Today this morning and assured us that the insurance arm of his company was safe and sound. He further stated that his plan is to sell the insurance division of AIG to raise money to pay back the Federal Reserve.

It is the opinion of this blogger that all these so-called “bailouts” (which are more like “uses of taxpayer money that accomplish even more of nothing than usual”) need to stop, and it might even be argued that wholesale nationalisation of the firms in question would be a better option. If you’re going to do any of it, might as well go all the way. And besides, if there’s going to be misuse of taxpayer money, it’s better that the government does it rather than a private corporation (which isn’t intrinsically accountable to the American people).