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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (41459)	10/30/2008 9:56:32 PM
From: Dan B.	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 149317

Re: "Providing private institutions in an economic crisis with access to gov't funding is not socialism." Sure it is. Under Free Markets, there is no socialism. Any teansy bit of anything which looks like socialism at all, precludes actual free markets from operating. Governmental control, public funds, and the "peoples" interest are all involved here. That's about all of what defines socialism. Despite right-wing blather to the contrary, there IS such thing as a "little socialism" in this sense. "Once done, Creating institutions like FNM and FRE that are independent of the gov't but were created to accomplish certain goals desired by the gov't is not socialism either." Sure it is. Government has created these institutions, not free enterprise. Since it will always be impossible to accurately say FNE and FRE operated independently of the government when in fact they always operated at the behest of government backed by public funds, and in the "interest" of the people (per Barney Frank and others), they surely must be considered socialist enterprises. Private Institutions cease to be private when they are backed by government. Free markets ceased to operate once governmental decree created institutions backed by tax funds. Peter Lynch recommended investing in these two long ago, with great success. He noted that they had the upside of a private concern but without the risk since they were backed by government (taxpayers). To claim free markets ruled at Fannie and Freddie is obviously wrong. If not socialism, I suppose you'll call it some half-breed name. But, really, in this sense there is no such thing as a little socialism. Once any element of socialism is introduced, Free Markets cease to operate. Look, it's a duck, really. Dan B.