What is it when you give hundreds of billions of dollars to wealthy capitalists and corporations?

[Sunnie]

An investment, hopefully a good one!

[Jared]

Obamanation

Similar to giving hundreds of billions of dollars to poor freeloader slackers.

[shadow]

a present

[+/-]

Bad, unfair economic policy.

[TTS]

payoff

[as.erwin]

GIVE means that there are no strings... No rules...
A better question is - what is it when the federal government goes into business?

answer - fascism

[Forty 7]

No, it's more like fascism. When the government becomes merged with or beholden to private financial interests, and is used as a weapon to impose their agenda, that is fascism.

Especially when you have an iconic leader with a cult of personality and a fervently nationalist grassroots support base.... I mean, like it or not, that's the textbook definition of fascism, kids!

But yes, Bush was also a socialist, in the sense that he expanded the size of government by over 300%, and a fascist, in the sense that he and Obama worked together back in October to facilitate the mass-scale robbery of the American people on behalf of private banks with no oversight.

Really, to be honest with you, this is a new form of fascism that there is just no historical precedent for.

Whereas the power structure of a fascist state generally goes:

1.Central Banks
2.Government
3.Private Industry (corporations and lower banks)

Today's American version goes more like this:

1. Central Banks
2. Corporations
3. Government
4. Lower banks

So the nat'l gov't is a little lower on the food chain ... but the result is basically the same, because the government and the private corporations and the banks are all operating as a unit, in collusion against the people.

Anyway, it is certainly not socialism, otherwise the taxpayers would be the ones getting the handouts.

Hope that helps!

[Pfo]

You could consider it a socialist policy in that the government gets directly involved with market entities. True socialism would have the government controlling those companies. It could also be regulated capitalism, but that's a stretch.

Yes, that's what Bush did, he himself even stated that his policy went against free market principles and against his own beliefs. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I wouldn't call him a socialist because he had a solid 8 years of non-socialist policies or tendencies, and he himself admitted that he did not want to do what he did but rather he had no other option.

[justgoodfolk]

No, it's wealth distribution alright b!ut has nothing to do with socialism.

The breakdown of the US financial system and the government bailout of Wall Street have seriously discredited the ideological justifications of capitalism.
Worship of the "free market" has long been something of a secular religion in the US. Capitalist ideology has proclaimed that the market's "invisible hand" will best advance the interests of historical progress, that taxes on the rich and regulations on big businesses must be reduced because only the "risk-takers" know where resources can best be allocated, that any sort of government intervention to improve the living conditions of workers, the poor, the elderly and jobless youth creates a "climate of dependency," that government cannot simply "throw money" at problems, etc., etc.
All these shibboleths now stand exposed as rank hypocrisy, as the biggest financial institutions belly up to the public trough. Yet amidst this historic crisis of the capitalist system, some of those opposed to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's Wall Street bailout have claimed that the measures employed are "socialist."
Suddenly--17 years after the Soviet Union's collapse and the supposed "death of socialism"--the "S" word is being bandied about by American politicians and media pundits.
Charges that the Wall Street bailout is socialism have come most frequently from the far right wing of the Republican Party. To note a few examples, Congressman Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, claimed that Paulson's plan may put the US on, "the slippery slope to socialism." Representative Sam Johnson, also of Texas, warned, "As a relentless supporter of free enterprise, I fear we are rushing headlong into socialism." Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky called Paulson's measures, "financial socialism" and "un-American." Congressman Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan even compared the bailout to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
Such claims display a combination of stupidity and deceit. Those who make them rely on the low level of historical knowledge and political understanding among the American people, for which the population is not to blame. It is the product of the decades-long promotion of political reaction and celebration of the most backward ideologies and conceptions-including hostility toward science-along with the gutting of public education.
A central component of this debasement of political and intellectual life has been the promotion of anti-communism, based largely on the false identification of socialism and Marxism with their political opposite, Stalinism.
The bailout measures are being enacted not by the working people, but are being imposed behind the backs of the people by the most powerful bankers, through their political representatives in both parties. Ownership and control of the financial levers of economic life remain entirely in the private hands of the richest people in the country. Those who have presided over the failure of private firms are dictating the terms of their own rescue at the expense of the people.
The social interests that are being defended are determined by the class nature of the state power that is formulating and enacting the measures. The events of the past months have demonstrated as never before that the American government and the US two-party system are political instruments not of the people, but rather of a financial oligarchy.
For their part, the right-wing Republicans initially opposed the bailout from the standpoint of "free market" capitalism. They are not against government intervention into the market per se. Rather, they oppose government action that in any way constrains the activities of the most powerful sections of finance capital.
They label as "socialism" any government measure that limits the ability of the major banks and corporations to maximize their profits, including such things as the minimum wage, restrictions on hours of work, health and safety regulations, environmental regulations, etc. They oppose tax increases for the wealthy and denounce as "big government" any and all government-run social programs.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct200...-o15.shtml

[Les S]

It is corporate welfare, which for some reason, Republicans cannot understand.

It is as if, when corporation get billions of dollars free from our government, that is not welfare, but when a poor person gets 100 dollars, that is socialism and it is wrong. We want the poor person to be accountable for his own actions, but we give a free pass to the wealthy elite when they make billion dollar mistakes. A Republican says, that is OK.