Thursday, September 01, 2011

Big Gummint, Big Biz: the Krueger/Mussolini Blend

Carney warns.

Tim Geithner's deputy, Alan Krueger, is a fitting pick to lead President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers -- which is to say he believes in the same noxious collusion of Big Business and Big Government that has dominated the Obama administration's economic policy.

IIRC, that was also a Mussolini scheme.  Adding Big Labor to the mix--which is implicit in "Big Gummint"--would produce the Italian Fascist Trifecta.

Krueger's pet policy at Treasury, a convoluted program called Build America Bonds, amounted to a taxpayer subsidy for big banks and other corporate giants that increased public indebtedness. In other words, typical Obamanomics.

Next week, expect to see President Obama start banging the drum for an "infrastructure bank." Krueger testified in favor of the bank at a Senate hearing where he insisted this new government program wouldn't just be a Fannie Mae for roads and mass transit. But the "bank" Krueger wants is a quasi-governmental agency that puts taxpayer money at risk in order to finance activity that profits big companies.

IOW, High-Speed Rail, among other busts.

"Of course state and local governments are big fans of the Build America Bonds program," Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican and a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, said on the floor last year. "They get federal money that they don't have to pay back." But more important, Grassley added: "The large Wall Street investment banks love Build America Bonds -- they're getting richer off of them."

Can you spell "Goldman, Sachs"?

More important:  can you spell "Mussolini"?

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