Food for thought about crony capitalism and “Let Them Eat Losses”

[jody]

Let Them Eat Losses

In the dying American Empire, there was no longer a place for the small:
• The Mom & Pop shop was as passé as the corner candy store.
• The family farm – penalized by big government’s “Get Big or Get Out” policies that subsidized factory farms – had become a quaint curiosity.
• The village hardware store was hammered by Lowe’s and Home Depot; Staples and Office Depot stomped out the stationery store.
• Across the spectrum… finance, defense, insurance, health, news and entertainment… virtually every business sector had been commandeered by the Bigs.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Not only was there no hard evidence demonstrating that saving the “too big to fails” was necessary to save the economy, the rescue plans themselves violated the most cherished tenets of capitalism, which hold that:
• Failures should be allowed to fail.
• The best will succeed.
• Competition is healthy.
• Market voids created by failures will be filled by competitors.

No individual, business, institution, nation or empire is too-big-to-fail. Had true capitalism been allowed to function unimpeded, the bloated, over-extended, inefficient and gluttonous firms and industries would have failed. There would have been hardships and losses but, finally rid of its financial tapeworms, the purged system could be restored to health.

No “ism” or “ology” – regardless of purity of intent or moral foundation – is immune to corruption and abuse. While capitalism itself is being blamed for the excesses that brought on financial chaos, prior to the most recent gambling binge, in tandem with the blanket dismantling of safeguards and the overt takeover of Washington by Wall Street, capitalism was responsible for creating one of the world’s most successful and universally admired societies.

Crony capitalism at wikipedia.

[KansDem]

1. K&R!!!

This sentence says it all:

Not only was there no hard evidence demonstrating that saving the “too big to fails” was necessary to save the economy, the rescue plans themselves violated the most cherished tenets of capitalism, which hold that:
• Failures should be allowed to fail.
• The best will succeed.
• Competition is healthy.
• Market voids created by failures will be filled by competitors.

That's what I learned growing up in the '50s and '60s. Capitalism meant freedom: freedom to succeed or freedom to fail. No fucking bailouts for failed capitalists!

We were fighting communism, because it would imprison us. Capitalism meant "freedom," and communism meant "no choice."

I always think it odd that corporations told us over and over during those decades to fear communism; that if the commies took Vietnam, they would roll all over SE Asia and into Australia, then they'd be marching down Main Street, USA!!!

Well, when Clinton normalized relations with Vietnam in 1995, US corporations fell all over each to get in there and set up their businesses and outsource US jobs, and I thought "Hey! These corporations warned us about "commies" marching down Main Street, USA! Now we buy their goods and services on Main Street, USA."