Suckers to the Rescue

As a writer, one of the things I like to explore is the way that the Republicans, marketing geniuses that they are, have so-often succeeded in framing and restricting the pubic discourse by controlling the language we use. It’s the relationship between language and social psychology that fascinates me.

The news of the last three days has been all about the crisis in the financial markets. Suddenly administration officials are having to work weekends trying to forestall a complete financial meltdown, triggered by the crisis in the mortgage market, as presumably evidenced by the fall in stock prices for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

I am not an economist. But first when U.S. taxpayers were put on the hook to bail out Bear Stearns, and now with the latest proposals to rescue Fannie and Freddie, we see the full corruption of our current system at play.

David Wessel of The Wall Street Journal adopted the language of the right when he said on NPR yesterday that Congress would “stay away from the extremes of privatization or nationalization”. [emphasis added]

That’s how the Republicans like it: they take all the profit during times of market exuberance and success, and then when the excesses of capitalism finally take the entire thing off the rail, the U.S. taxpayer is expected to step in to assume the loss because the entire greedy enterprise has woven itself so deeply into the fabric of our economy that it cannot be allowed to fail.

Or so we are told.

When taxpayers were forced to assume the risks involved with bailing out Bear Stearns, we allowed the worst kind of corporate speculative and fraudulent behavior to evade the natural market consequences of its own behavior. What message was sent? You can be as irresponsible as you like in the pursuit of profit but if you do it on a big enough scale you can put the taxpayer on the hook in your stead.

We are doing this again with Fannie and Freddie, and you and I should be letting out a howl. Why is it out of the question to fully privatize Fannie and Freddie? Because Republicans call that an extreme solution? Fannie and Freddie have spent enormous amounts of money lobbying Congress to avoid any kind of regulation that might have prevented this from happening. Why NOT let their stockholders suffer the consequences?

Because, we are told, Fannie and Freddie hold more than half of all U.S. mortgages.

Then let’s nationalize them. Just because conservatives have made the words “socialized” and “nationalized” into dirty obscenities? If the government if going to buy shares, let’s buy them all – and not at some inflated price that cushions the blow for shareholders, but at their true worth which, today, is very little. Sure it would cost a fortune, but at least when it was done the taxpayer might get to realize some of the profits that have historically gone to provide some of the most obscene executive compensation on Wall Street.

Which bring us to the word the word of the day:

Oligarchy

Or would you prefer Plutocracy?

At first it appeared that this was going to be pushed through so quickly that there was no way to stop it, but apparently I am not the only one howling. Consideration of the proposals has been delayed, which gives you the chance to contact your Congressional representatives and tell them “No.” Nationalize it if necessary, but quit using us to bail out corporations and save them from their own mismanagement.