By JONATHAN MACEY
To socialize the American economy, it is not necessary to nationalize every business in the United States. All it requires is to put the corporations that control the finances of all of the companies in the economy under government control. And that is what is happening now.
Recall that very early in the bailout process, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and then New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner gathered CEOs of the nation's largest banks into a room at the New York Fed and insisted that they take massive sums of public money by selling preferred stock to the government. Some of these firms, most notably well-managed Wells Fargo, resisted. But they were coerced into taking the money by the farcical argument that if they turned down the money, then the companies that needed a bailout (i.e., Citigroup) would be stigmatized.
But how much worse could Citigroup's stigma be? Nobody really believes that the bank is anything but a zombie as it is....
To socialize the American economy, it is not necessary to nationalize every business in the United States. All it requires is to put the corporations that control the finances of all of the companies in the economy under government control. And that is what is happening now.
Recall that very early in the bailout process, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and then New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner gathered CEOs of the nation's largest banks into a room at the New York Fed and insisted that they take massive sums of public money by selling preferred stock to the government. Some of these firms, most notably well-managed Wells Fargo, resisted. But they were coerced into taking the money by the farcical argument that if they turned down the money, then the companies that needed a bailout (i.e., Citigroup) would be stigmatized.
But how much worse could Citigroup's stigma be? Nobody really believes that the bank is anything but a zombie as it is....
No comments:
Post a Comment