Discussion on:

Interview: How corporate socialism is crippling U.S. prosperity

that's not what it means. Please stick to the accepted meaning of words otherwise none of us will have a clue what anyone else is talking about. This is not socialism, it's just business. Powerful interests always act to maximise their power and interests. Is that new? The important word here is 'corporation'.

They're Johnston's words, so don't shoot the messenger.

That said, the headline is much too long anyway, and this term certainly doesn't help that fact. I've edited it.

The term is Corporate Socialism, and the concept is that while the profits are indeed tagged for private retention, the FAILINGS of the system are indeed "socialized" -- that is WE CONSUMERS pay for the failures.

If you truly fail to understand this simple feature of today's Capitalism, I point you to the fact that the government recently bailed out the Banks -- rather than let them simply fail, as the "Free Market" myth says they ought to when they screw up.

It is not "just business" to cheat the game -- meaning cheating taxpayers and the public -- by lying and fixing the rules. That is a lame, lame, lame excuse that flawed individuals have been using for decades to cover their bad behavior. If you cannot be an honest business person, stay out of business. The reason the nation is in this sorry fix is because Wall Street people fixed the game on housing, then walked away with millions, each, in bonuses as a reward for tanking their corporations and the nation. There is nothing to be admired in such individuals. Obama's biggest malfunction has been his failure to prosecute people in the financial sector for bad behavior. You may have noticed that the American people are running on a shorter fuse. Stay tuned. There is comeuppance in the wings waiting to take the stage.

You said "We pay four times what the French do for a triple play package of cable, Internet and telephone and they get worldwide TV, not just domestic; their Internet is ten times faster and instead of two country calling, they get long-distance to 70 countries at no extra charge. All that for $38 compared to the U.S. average of $160 including taxes. "

This may be true, but the really awkward thing about it is that in France, the primary provider is France Telecom, which drives the prices and keeps them low, which is State-owned and is to all intents a monopoly. You prove, awkwardly, that the best way to run a national universal telecom system and provide low-cost universal service is to nationalize it!! Is that your intention?

whether intentional or not.

I don't do cable, satellite, etc. and the reason I decline the services, and especially "packages" is that I know the prices are a cheat, and secondly, 80% of the available material is garbage that no one with an intellect or education would watch.

...but theft as well.

EVERY "package" of cable channels the industry sells sends money to FAUX Noise as part of the "basic package."

This means that EVERY cable bill paid in America helps support the channel that every (THINKING) American knows is really a Propaganda Channel.

If we lived in Europe, we'd have a CHOICE to pay FAUX or not, based on Ala-Carte channel packages. Not in America, sorry.

Yet another way the Corporatists have us over a barrel.

I hate paying for MSNBC, CNBC,CSPAN, CNN, PBS, CURRENT TV, HEADLINE NEWS and all the other channels that are part of the propaganda arm of the liberal/socialist movement.

I would gladly cut off their funding with an al-a-carte buying plan. Judging by their poor ratings, most of those channels would fail if not kept alive by forced fees.

I would save a lot more money al-a-carte by dropping them than you would save dropping just FOX.

I'm a dual citizen of the US and Switzerland (born and raised in the US). In Switzerland we don't have greedy, corrupt, moronic Republicans messing everything up with stupidity. The US has the only people in the world stupid enough to believe in the failure known as trickle down economics. Reganomics was the worst idea in history and Regan was the third worst President the US has ever seen, (only preceded by the 2 Bushes). The US doesn't have to re-invent the wheel, there are plenty of countries that have surpassed the US and they make a great example of what to copy. (and here is a little clue, they all think the Republicants are worthless morons who only know how to run a country into the ground. I happen to agree with them)

...from a citizen of a country that gets to remain wealthy as a haven for those who hide their wealth from the Progressives he so admires.

Except for defense, ( no private contractors) , railways ( strictly state owned) , postal service (again state owned) all other services have state owned as well privately held service providers, banking, insurance, air and road transportation, health services, education, you name it. There is abundant competition in every field.

All services are firmly regulated and controlled by the state in the best interest of the people and national security. One has the choice to opt for any from a wide choice.

That is why there are NO burner phones available in India, No communication service is available without 100% verified identity of the individual availing that service. No way to hide caller ID. No way to disenfranchise absolutely any individual by any stupid ID laws. It happens to be a fundamental right as it should be in a true democracy. No filibustering either. BTW we do not have those moronic republicans, either.

You obviously don't understand free markets, the freedom and liberty they present to people of a nation. I wouldn't expect you to understand this being from India. A nation the U.S. has help lift itself form poverty.

Here in Australia there is reasonable carrier competition, and our internet &c is closer to France's than the USA's.
Also, the prices were a higher and the service poorer when we did have a monopoly (Telstra owned pretty well all of the infrastructure, and charged retail prices to other ISPs to start with).
I think his point stands.

Its the regulator, NOT France Telecom that dictates wholesale prices in France and herein lies the difference between France and the US (and other states that suffer from uncompetitive telcos); ineffective regulators, stymied by incompetence and corporate lobbyists acting against the consumer.

Well why not?! Cheap, universal services compared to increasingly expensive, dismal services?? It seems a no-brainer. But somehow this has become an acceptable standard for too many Americans.

Good point ATT is a subfunction of the NSA anyway!

...since at least in "socialism", the benefits or suffering are theoretically shared by most.

But fundamentally, I totally agree with him. Capitalism needs failure as much as it needs success. By not allowing the fundamentally broken banks to fail, we only encourage the bad actors responsible.

There was a brilliant advert in a magazine that exposes a lot of corruption like this in SA - called Nose Week. They had an advert for a motor manufacturer asking for bailout that went along these lines: "You did not buy our sh*tty cars, so now we will take your money anyway." It points out the absurdity of what happened with the bailout system. These same companies who took hard earned tax payer money - gave no mercy to suppliers who went under. They then retrenched large portions of their workforce. By allowing the abusers of capitalism not to fall - the Bush administration ended capitalism. Regardless of party politics - capitalism needs reform as does the political system.

"Capitalism" is only a state of reality. It exists under all political/economic regimes. The only difference between these regimes is the degree that the state attempts to manipulate it.

During the Cold War, I used to tell people that there was a far more pure form of capitalism in Russia than there was in the US. It was called the "black market".

exists any time the established political system implicitly requires it; the requirement will never be explicit. Whenever the established system tends to strongly favor one group, while denying its benefits to others or when a commodity (e.g. drugs & alcohol) is too strongly regulated or denied by by that system, this "pure" capitalism springs up to make available that which is denied. Thus, "pure" capitalism existed in the USSR under the Soviet regime. It existed under Prohibition. It exists now under drug prohibition.

The problem with "pure" capitalism is it tends toward monopoly, and the potential/current monopolist will do what is necessary to gain or keep the monopoly. As this type of capitalism operates outside the established society, what is necessary is not usually restrained by current social mores. Thus, the gang wars and violence of the 20s were a natural process under "pure" capitalism...and the gang wars and violence of the last three decades are also a natural process.

...since almost every monopoly I can think of is, in fact, established and maintained by government.

The banks also promised to do mortgage workouts if they were bailed out, but then accelerated repossessions. They promised to loan to small business, the real job engine, but instead went back to gambling in the Big Casino. But everyone just accepted the lie and now the DOJ has given Goldman-Sachs a get-out-of-jail-free card by publicly saying they will never prosecute G-S.

Socialism among the only ones who count the corporate citizens nonhuman immortal immoral psychopathic entities. Not little people. Like humans.

Also these immortal "persons' tend to have millions and billions to influence their interests too. Last time I checked I didn't have any "free" money to send to a politician let alone buy lunch.

Now we pay the price for the excesses of globalizing American companies. I worked for one of those utilities that expanded to Europe and nearly went broke because they tried to use their 1930's business plan too big. Workers in Texas were forced to cooperate with freezing wages while executives were rewarded millions and in one case a billion dollars to fail. They all left and our retirement plans recovered only to be sold to another company that raided the retirement plans. Good luck with maintaining good service and happy workers without letting the workers have some control.

Unionise!

I know someone who lost all their money to Enron but is Still a Republican and doesn't like that N**er President. Some people just know how to bend over and kick themselves in the ass.

"Wall Street and the Too Big To Fail Banks are, for now, by far the worst offenders. We put $14.7 trillion, the entire economic output of the nation in 2009, at risk under the George W. Bush administration bailout instead of letting these firms suffer the consequences of their own mismanagement."

Yep, that's half the story. And then Obama signed Dodd-Frank into law, which institutionalizes "Too Big To Fail." That's the rest of the story.

When it comes to corporatism, with politicians and corporations both bellying up to the public trough, there's plenty of blame to go around.

Here's a crazy idea: Perhaps the solution is less government, not more.

stop the class warfare!

any more than less government equals "free market".

In light of the fact that the average income of 95% of Americans has stagnated or decreased over the past 30 years (when adjusted for inflation) while the earnings of those at the top of the economic pyramid have soared (again, when adjusted for inflation), just who, exactly, do you think is making war on whom?

I am sure Ronny will save us right?

In India the government would have bought off all the failed mortgages for a dime on a dollar or simply allowed those companies to go bankrupt. Same with the banks and insurance companies. They would simply have been merged into state owned entities under similar conditions with the share holders hanging on to the worthless paper.

A similar approach with renegotiated mortgages, for example repayment plan sans interest, would have gone far in alleviating the miseries of the US population. The buyers would be held responsible but at an affordable rate. The government too would make money on their throwaway purchase price !

If the US government started arbitrarily seizing mortgages or forced them to be paid off at pennies to the dollar, no company would ever again make a mortgage loan in the US except at huge interest rates.

There was a lot of greed on every side during the real estate bubble. People signed on to mortgages their income could never support, in the vain hope that real estate would continue to increase at ridiculous rates. They were just as overcome by greed as the big Wall Street banks. Rather than enforcing existing regulations to stop the madness, government at all levels instead did everything it could to make these outlandish loans possible.

As for India, the central government struggles under massive debt as it subsidizes fuel and other commodities. It's a game that can't be won in the long run, and its people are barely improving their lot despite these massive subsidies.

I think 'greed' is the wrong word for people who were fooled into buying a house, taking on a mortgage they couldn't really afford (or understand), only to become 'upside-down' or foreclosed on a few years later. Greed is illustrated by the Big Banks, the mortgage lenders, allied politicians, etc.

Those are the folks who made out or remain making billions, while not being held accountable for almost tanking America's financial system. Somehow those consumers who you claim were being "greedy," who are now probably a relative-away from being completely homeless, as opposed to 'making out like bandits', doesn't qualify.

Foolish, naive, vulnerable, easily-manipulated, and yes, even a few stupid homebuyers, but 'greedy' isn't the correct word I'd use.

A lot of that "greed" is because housing inflated so much it cost a million to buy a bungalow. I recall seeing a lousy little yellow crackerboard house at the bottom of my hill, that would have sold for about twenty grand in the fifties inflate to nearly a half million. Ordinary working people had to take out ruinous loans to buy the same house they could have paid down on minimum wage in the fifties. "Make a fortune flipping houses" was the big scam hyped everywhere. Buy a house for almost nothing, flip it, then the next guy flips it, then the next guy flips it, all for a profit for the Same Friggin House. But at a certain point someone has to pay for all those ill gotten gains.

When did the US government tell the banks they were required to abandon safe lending practices? And if government did, in fact, do so, wouldn't the banks have been perfectly justified in telling the government where to go and how to get off when it got there? Do you think the banks wouldn't have done that if compliance meant a decrease in profits?

More information...
http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/commentary/2009/0509.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis

It's just a repug lie to divert our attention from the banksters so we can hate our own government - mostly fueled by Southerners who still want to win the civil war and bust the union.

Even if the govt relaxed lending requirments, they did Not dream up this idea of slicing and dicing mortgages into worthless instruments, then selling and reselling them all over the planet, inflating their value a thousand time - which is what caused the Real damage. The banks thought that up all on their own.

It all started under Carter. That led to law suits in the late 1980s, but to keep it simple. Here goes.

When the US Government, starting under Bush 41 and moving on through Clinton and Bush 43, relaxed the lending rules the banks started to run out of money to fund all of the mortgages they were making. You can thank the authors of the useless Dodd/Frank bill for being behind many of the questionable changes that followed.

Through Fannie and Freddie the US government started the practice of bundling mortgages so the government would buy them and the banks would then have the cash on hand needed to make more loans. That idea came out of freshman Congressman Marty Meehans office in conjuction with Congressman Barney Frank around about 1993/94.

It was an idea brought up by a Bank of America official at a meeting in Lawrence Mass as part of a pilot project providing mortgages to people whos credit had been trashed by unemployment in the 1991 recession. The origional concept was a noble and well thought out plan that went bad during implimentation.

After realizing that the scope of what they had gotten into was even more than the government could afford, the bureaucrats in Fannie and Freddie pushed Clinton for help. He worked with Congress to repeal Glass/Steagall in 1999 to allow investment banks to get into the game.

The rules were so fast and loose that all semblance of good banking went out the window. Many of the lending rules were managed by the individual federal reserve banks. Some like, the NY and LA fed, went nuts and set virtually no rules. Count welfare and unemplyment payments as income? Sure. No income, no problem.

The level of regional control is why New England saw some of the least impact of the sub-prime crisis. The head of the Boston fed had kept a lid on the crazy lending among New England based banks. It pissed them off at the time, but only 1 bank under his region has failed during this mess. The damage in New England was limited to those mortgages held by the big national banks. Local banks in New England are now thriving.

Nail on the head! I've never figured out why all of the Dodd/Frank stuff receives no mention in the media..even when it was fresh.

Another effect of the "Too Big To Fail" is that the smaller banks in the rest of the country outside of New England that didn't get involved with the scam, did honest business, etc.. are now taking it in the shorts for the TBTF's..

Yes but the taxpayers would have benefited Why do you think they want to raid Social Security and say bad thing about it? Well its full of money what a greedy grab.

of those scum trying to call Social Security an Entitlement, as if its some form of welfare. I worked real hours and had real money taken from my check for SS - it's an Investment. These Goebbels-like brainwashers on the right try to make it sound bad with their word games.

You are not the problem with SS as you paid in and thus rightfully expect to benefit. The problem is that the politicians have decided to use the "retirement" program like a welfare program. There are many getting SS benefits who never paid (or paid little). I frequently see billboards with lawyers advertising their services to help get SS disability. I know of healthy people in their 40s who get SS disability and will for the next 30 to 40 years until they die.

These are the reasons why SS is going broke. Like normal when there is a large amount of money involved, the politicians cannot keep their hands off and end up using the money to benefit themselves. In this case making it easier for those who should not get benefits to get them. They do this because those getting the benefits will turn around and vote for the politicians who allowed it. So in effect the politicians are giving away our money to those who don't deserve it so that they can buy their votes.

Wouldn't you have rather invested your "real money" on your own instead of being forced to "invest" in this government give away?

Too many people think SS is this big pile of money sitting there.

Congress and Presidents, from both parties, have been raiding it for decades.

It is full of IOUs that are coming due soon. At that point it will crush the federal budget.

What kind of "investment" is it that is forced by law, and has a guaranteed negative rate of return?

At least Madoff's victims had an opportunity to opt out.

Iceland repudiated their phony debt, jailed the rotten banksters, and is recovering. We are not. Funny how our press says Nothing about Iceland.

And Bjork is cool ;')

Because Congress and Presidents in a decades long Bipartisan effort made everything that was done to create the finacial mess LEGAL to do.

Many of them broke NO LAWS.

We should set a great example for the future. Jail all of the politicians involved.

Do note that the greatest financial and business growth was during a time of Strong regulation of finance and business, no matter the size of govt. Once the corporations got their hooks into govt to entrench themselves, the regulations were loosened--all this does is to advantage the larger companies already in a particular market, as it allows them to freeze or squeeze out the competition.

Also, govt should always hold onto infrastructure that is non-competitve--hospitals, public transport, a few other things. If they don't, all they do is get worse and cost more under private companies.

The trouble is that things like facts and financial history are unknown to the Faux and Limbaugh crowd. They are not only ignorant of facts - they can look right at them and deny them. It's really a form of insanity.