For a few months now, we have been hearing about the scenario that socialism is gradually but surely inching its way well into the social, political, and economic processes of the greatest superpower on earth, the United States of America. The federal government would have been loath to make these US businesses fail. Neither will it ever think of helping these failed and failing businesses with no strings attached. After all, government is a business in itself. And so it came to pass that the government extended a lifeline to these doomed businesses – with strings attached: the participation of government in the spoils of these businesses.

Business, being as it were, will have to agree that the Obama administration move to address the financial shakedown in the US has been the most viable. A total of $199.2 billion have been availed of from the government’s $700 billion bailout fund by close to 600 banks nationwide. The government has taken control of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The insurance giant American International Group (AIG) has received a $180 billion taxpayer bailout, but the company is not nationalized as of yet. GM is the latest to succumb to government takeover.

American corporate and business assets not held by the US government are said to amount to $39.2 trillion. American corporate and business assets recently nationalized by the US government are nowhere near to consuming all of the $700 billion bailout fund reserves. If socialism is operationally defined as the state ownership of the means of production (in this case, the means of production is cold hard cash), then the much-touted about impending US socialism is nothing but hype from those threatened by any nudge away from good old comfortable democracy and free market economy.

But, then again, we are talking of financial and industrial giants that play right into the interstices of American life such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and GM. Nationalizing these business giants may yet redefine the meaning of socialism.

Image

Via the Atlantic