"US Has 'Effectively Nationalized' Home Mortgage Industry"
"The home mortgage sector in the world’s largest economy has been 'effectively nationalized,' says George Melloan, former deputy editor of the editorial page for The Wall Street Journal. ...'There are still lots of private banks and mortgage companies generating and servicing mortgages, so the government doesn’t ''own'' the whole industry. But the government (or the lucky half of the population who pay income taxes) now owns most of the risks,' he added. 'The moral is that government backing — implicit during the heyday of Fannie and Freddie and explicit today — leads to sloppy banking and ultimately to defaults,' Melloan wrote in The Journal. 'Taxpayers, with little knowledge of the commitments made on their behalf, become responsible for the losses.'"
(Source: Glenn J. Kalinoski, Thursday, 14 Mar 2013 12:00 PM, URL.)
FLASHBACK (Sept. 6, 2008):
Attention Opponents of a "Socialized America":
"Socialism" is actually ambiguous. (See Noam Chomsky, What Uncle Sam Really Wants [Berkeley, CA: Odonian P, 1992], pp. 91ff.)
For example, "socialism" can mean: "Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively...". Alternatively, it can designate: "Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which... a centralized government... plans and controls the economy." (Source)
"Nationalization" (definition) "Nationalization (British English spelling nationalisation) is the process of taking a private industry or private assets into public ownership by a national government or state." (Source)
But, for those who are laboring under the impression that the march to some form of "socialism" in the United States is the peculiar project of Democrats, Nota Bene:
First, Centralization and Federalization - both of the economy and of the political system more broadly - were the legacy of Republican President Abraham Lincoln, in the aftermath of the War between the States. Take just the economic angle. Lincoln issued the first paper currency, overturning the received view that the U.S. Constitution forbade any branch but the Legislature from authorizing any sort of monetary unit but metal coinage.
"A United States Note, also known as a Legal Tender Note...a form of fiat currency..., is a type of paper money that was issued from 1862 to 1971 in the U.S. ...They were known popularly as 'greenbacks' in their heyday... On January 16, 1862, in a private meeting with President Lincoln, Edmund Dick Taylor advised him to issue greenbacks as legal tender. Congressman and Buffalo banker Elbridge G. Spaulding prepared a bill, based on the Free Banking Law of New York, that eventually became the National Banking Act of 1863. ... hitherto the Constitution had been interpreted as not granting the government the power to issue a paper currency. 'The bill before us is a war measure, a measure of necessity, and not of choice,' Spaulding argued before the House... Despite strong opposition, President Lincoln signed the First Legal Tender Act,... enacted February 25, 1862, into law, authorizing the issuance of United States Notes as a legal tender—the paper currency soon to be known as 'greenbacks.'" (Source)
Second, it was Republican Senator Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich, of Rhode Island, who helped to orchestrate the centralization and "[rebuilding of] the American financial system along Progressive lines through the institution of the federal income tax amendment and the Federal Reserve System"
(Source: URL. See also, e.g., G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island: A
Second Look at the Federal Reserve [Westlake Village, CA: American
Media, 1994/2010].)
Third, the transition to overt government ownership of industry and banking has, in recent years, been conducted under the steerage of Republicans:
Stephen Labaton and Andrew Ross Sorkin, writing in the New York Times of September 6, 2008, state that: "Senior officials from the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve on Friday called in top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants, and told them that the government was preparing to place the two companies under federal control, officials and company executives briefed on the discussions said. ..."
(Source: "U.S. Rescue Seen at Hand for 2 Mortgage Giants," URL.)
In this, Republican President George Walker Bush is merely continuing the practices of the likes of Republican Richard Milhous Nixon, who, by executive order, took the United States off of the gold standard and created the government-owned transportation corporation, Amtrak (National Railroad Passenger Corporation), both in 1971 (perhaps, at the behest of Republican financier, globalist, and meddler David Rockefeller and his ilk). (See, Griffin, op. cit., pp. 45 & 63 and URL.)
"...President George W. Bush was the largest social spender in history [at the time of article publication], according to a recent report by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. In his first term Bush increased discretionary spending 19 percent. During Bush's second term federal spending increased 49 percent. The Mercatus Center said Bush's spending made President Bill Clinton's administration look conservative. ..."
("Glenn Beck: Bush's Compassionate Conservatism Must 'Die Violent Death'," Monday, May 25, 2009 1:46 PM, Original URL, Cached URL.)
This is NOT to say that it is my view that the Democrats are "the answer" - far from it! After all, Democrat Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law. Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) confiscated the people's gold and instituted government subsidized social welfare programs. Democrat William Jefferson Clinton, of course, signed NAFTA into law; even though it was Republican George Herbert Walker Bush who had initially signed the agreement in December of 1992.
But, this last datum, mentioned above, illustrates my point: Both parties are apparently working towards and advancing the same sorts of policies, facilitating what one might variously term (non-collectivist) "socialism" or (corporatist) "fascism" depending upon the qualities of the policies that one is emphasizing. In my estimation, and as I have elsewhere attempted to partially document, both parties are working towards the destruction of the U.S. middle class; and both are working to increase the control of globalist corporations. Even if the "two parties" have different preferred TACTICS, they have the same broad objectives and STRATEGY.
According to Noam Chomsky, for instance, "...Clinton-style 'New Democrats'...[are,] in effect, moderate Republicans...".
(Source: "Democracy and Markets in the New World Order," Selections excerpted from Powers and Prospects, 1996, URL.)
In a now fairly infamous quotation, Carroll Quigley, the Georgetown University history professor whom Bill Clinton "named...as an important influence on his aspirations and political philosophy...", stated that:
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy." (See a screen capture HERE.)
(Sources: URL & Tragedy and Hope [New York: Macmillan, 1966], pp. 1247-8.)
The shadow government - the Cryptocracy - has exponents in both the Republican and Democratic parties.
