While You Were Sleeping

No, it's not a post on a Sandra Bullock movie from the '90's.

2 weeks ago most missed it because once again his highness Obama announced during the weekend the plan for nationalizing the banks.

Those loans that we thought were going to be repaid?

Oops, the new plan is to exchange the loans for majority stakes in common stock of these banks.

What does that mean? Simply this, the government is doing what we would all like to but don't have the money to.

They have taken over the companies the way the corporate raiders did in the 1980's.

In other words, swoop in on depressed companies and take them over in a "hostile takeover".

So, what had been a credit system, was now actually the government acting like an out of control hedge fund.
And with the loans converted into stock, the loans won't have to be repaid.

If, and it is a big if, the government decides to sell the stock eventually, what will happen is that the stock price will plummet again from the market being flooded with shares, the government having gotten the stock for virutally nothing, will make a huge profit, NOT have to pay capital gains taxes like you and I, and the rest of the common stock holders will once again suffer huge losses.

And the latest? Well, THIS weekend (getting familiar isn't it?) socialist czar Geithner and King Obama made the same announcement with General Motors.

So, our government will now own the banking system, and the largest manufacturing company in the country.

My friends, this is the definition of socialism. This is not an ideologic statement, but a straight dictionary definition.
State ownership.

The difference between socialism and communism? The first is an economic system, the second, a political/ideologic one that usually involves the first. But communism is highlited by generally totalitarian governments. Think Cuba, the Soviet Union, etc.

Usually noted by a single authoritarian leader under the guise of a legislative body, i.e. the Soviet party apparatus, or the "Supreme Soviet" as it was known then.

Does this sound like something going on here?