Socialising Debt and Privatising Profits

Watched Amy Goodman interview Matt Tabbi, the contributing editor for 'Rolling Stone' magazine, today and managed to get the gist of the story behind the story of the economic meltdown and the bailout, with Tabbi arguing that there has been "a kind of revoloution a coup d'etat" where a political trend that has been going on for some time has been formalised and cemented. Namely, "the takeover of government by a small class of connected insiders, who use money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations."(1) How has this been achieved? Well Tabbi contends that because the government now owns a controlling stake in an enormous variety of companies we now have, in effect, an extemely complex holding company and that the only people who know how to administer this holding company are the Wall Street insiders and the ex-Wall Street insiders who are now in the administration. Essentially, their political power has been increased because a political system that is beyond the comprehension of the average system has been created.(2)
Now, what is that big holding company doing with the money, money that it gets from the taxpayer? Well, they are sharing it out among themselves or, as Matt Tabbi says, "socialising the debt and privatising the profits."(3) Anyway Matt thanks for the way in which you formulated and expanded on the consequences of something I tried to explain in a couple of earlier posts.(4) One wonders as to the "quo vadis" of it all and I am off to get myself a cup of tea and catch up with today's sports.
1 http://www.democracynow.org/
2 ibid
3 ibd
4 http://thediplomatabroad.blogspot.com/search?q=bailout