When you hand over control, you hand over control, and there’s not much point about crying over the fact that you lost it later:
Under the Bush team a prominent and profitable bank, under threat of a damaging public audit, was forced to accept less than $1 billion of TARP money. The government insisted on buying a new class of preferred stock which gave it a tiny, minority position. The money flowed to the bank. Arguably, back then, the Bush administration was acting for purely economic reasons. It wanted to recapitalize the banks to halt a financial panic….
After 35 years in America, I never thought I would see this. I still can’t quite believe we will sit by as this crisis is used to hand control of our economy over to government. But here we are, on the brink. Clearly, I have been naive.
The Bush administration bluffed the banks and Obama is taking advantage of it. This is how the expansion of government in a two-party system usually works! It’s the Counterpush principle, the Nixon-to-China concept. The party which is supposedly against something is used to punch a hole through the wall of popular opinion, then the other party exploits the breach.