Thursday - October 09, 2008

Not so fast Agent Powers

Basil Exposition: Austin, the Cold War is over!
Austin Powers: Finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Eh comrades? Eh?
Basil Exposition: Austin… we won.
Austin Powers: Oh, smashing, groovy, yay capitalism!

Um, sorry Basil. It appears that you may have lost after all.

A quarter of a century ago, in the era of the Labour manifesto that was dubbed (by a member of the Labour shadow cabinet) “the longest suicide note in history”, when one wanted to depict the absurdity of the view of the world advanced by Tony Benn and Michael Foot one simply had to say: “They want to nationalise the banks!” People fell about laughing.

Today, it is all considerably less funny. We are all socialists now.

For the Government to take stakes in our leading banks in order to re-capitalise them is not quite the sovietisation of Britain, but it is a pretty good start. Given the instinctively socialistic leanings of our Prime Minister, it may well have been a move he undertook calmly and, quite possibly, with a little excitement.

Perhaps the consequences of his not having socialised our financial system in this way could have been catastrophic - a view taken not just by his closest Cabinet colleagues but also by the main opposition parties. Equally, the consequences of his having done so could be catastrophic, too, because the socialist experiment rarely ends up with people feeling happier, richer and more free until it has ended.

Anyone over the age of 40 will recall the abiding result of the days when we had a socialist economy in this country: poverty.

Well, fine. Do you think it’s any different over here? In a million years, you’d never guess what our government wants to do with our banks. Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, Free Markets and Caveat Emptor:

US Treasury May Capitalize Banks by End of Month
The U.S. Treasury Department plans to start directly injecting capital in U.S. banks as soon as the end of October in exchange for passive investment stakes, according to a financial policy source familiar with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s thinking.

Under authority granted to it by last week’s $700 billion market rescue legislation, Treasury would get common or preferred shares from the banks it capitalizes, the source told Reuters Thursday. The government does not intend to seek board seats in the voluntary capitalization program.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said later Thursday that Paulson is “actively considering” capital injections into troubled U.S. banks.
“Secretary Paulson is looking at all the different tools to figure out which ones should be used at what time and how robustly and how much money to put into each,” she said.

Treasury’s plan to inject capital would follow action by the British government Wednesday in which it pledged billions of dollars to shore up banks’ capital in exchange for preference shares. The source familiar with Paulson’s thinking said Treasury was working “extremely fast” to put together a capital injection plan. The injections would get at the credit crisis by giving banks more capacity to lend, complementing the bailout bill’s objective of removing soured mortgage-backed assets weighing down banks’ balance sheets.

This will be the perfect opportunity for our new Socialist Overlord Messiah to come to power. Handed to him on a silver platter. Give it two years and we’ll be part of the North American Union. Then part of the One. World. Order. With one currency, just like fwance is already pushing for. And we’ll go to it eagerly. Because Change is Good!

The very best chains are the ones the slaves make themselves and willingly put on.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/09/2008 at 01:44 PM   
Filed Under: • Nanny State • Tyrants and Dictators •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink •  

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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