I don’t know if you remember the days when newscasters would routinely smile when the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day in positive numbers. It was a not-so-subtle sign that “The system is working” for those who profited from the financial sector. For the rest of us, a smile meant good news — even though we probably had no idea what they hell the numbers meant, or what all this talk about “The Dow” was about.
Something like that is happening now, as newspapers report the surge in stock markets. And it’s clear that the move many countries have made to nationalize banks and inject capital into the system to loosen up credit may have the desired effect. The headlines won’t say anything about “Socialism Saves Capitalism,” but that’s pretty much what’s going on. Yes, it is ironic, but if we’ve learned anything in last eight years, irony has reigned supreme among the Bush Administration and the Republican Party.
The party that supposedly hates nation-building, had to become advocates of nation-building. The party that promotes freedom and derides “government interference” were zealous in supporting policies that lead to government intrusion into the lives of Americans. The party that believes in low taxes and curbing government growth, spent tax money and increased the size of federal bureaucracies in a way that would give FDR chills. And finally, the party that has been ramming through deregulation policies affecting the financial sector, has had to French kiss socialism to provide a trillion dollar safety net to keep the world-wide economic panic from reaching a depression. (more…)
