So while studying today, I was listening to a station on Sirius called Indie Talk. It's okay, the only guy on there I really like listening to is Ron Silver, but I'm an independent so it's all I could listen to political-wise. So this guy named Vinnie was on, the show was called "Me and Vinnie", and he was talking about the rising rate of foreclosures and how there's talk of a government bailout to help out these homeowners. This guy went off for ten minutes saying how the government shouldn't bail them out and that it's communism (not really, Vinnie) before I finally shut it off.
I do agree that homeowners probably shouldn't be bailed out. While the lenders share a large part of the blame for their until-recent tendencies to give a loan to anyone with a pulse, the people who were buying these homes should not have been buying them. They bit off more than they could chew. You also probably have a few speculators in there who were taking out loans to buy home and expecting that their equity would increase, and then were planning to sell at a profit. So no, I don't think they should be bailed out.
But on the other hand, just last week, you had the Fed bail out Bear Stearns, the investment house. They say that it was a co-effort between the Fed and JPMorganChase, but that's bullshit. The Fed just gave our money to JP so they could buy Bear in a firesale. I'm not a regular talk radio listener, but I think it'd be pretty safe to wager that when this happened, you didn't have "Vinnie" and all the other talk-radio guys going on rants about how Bear Stearns shouldn't be bailed out, and that it was "communism" to do so. Just like they weren't saying this back during the S&L scandals, or post 9/11, when the airlines needed our money.
So when some poor sucker who bit off more than he could chew needs the government to save him from losing his house, that's "communism." But when the government bails out Wall Street, then it's capitalism. Understand?
2 comments:
In the US whenever socialism is applied to the wealthy businessmen, corporation, then it is called capitalism. However, when it is applied to the working class people then it is called communism. The mis-labeling, mis-use, misleading of the word capitalism is the product of the Washington political think tanks, well funded by mega corporation, and spreads by the so called conservative talk shows. People ate it up without question, just like they believed every thing Bush said about the weapon of mass destruction before the war. No one has the intelligence to point out that socialism is not the same as communism, and the form of communism that practiced in the USSR is not really the same as what was in theory - just like the capitalism here in the US is not exactly the same as in theory either.
Thank you for that, and that's very well-put. I was planning to call "Vinnie" and tell him something along those lines, but it was a taped program. Damn.
Anyway, I happened to listen to a few more minutes of this show today; not by choice, Ron Silver (who is very good) had just ended and I kept it on. Today the subject was global warming and first he said that he didn't know whether it existed (how could you not, considering the evidence) and then he stated that assuming that it did, he felt that the U.S. was being put unfairly at fault.
And, being as we're what, 4 percent of the world's populace and yet emit over a quarter of its total emissions, how can we not be? All humankind shares the responsibility if global warming is manmade, and most indictators say that it is, but us Americans should take a little more of the blame, as we emit substantially more CO2.
And as usual, I posted longer than I'd intended to. Anyway, thanks again for visiting, and please come again.
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