CK MacLeod, on :
And now the US govt is in the position to back car warranties, UAW interests, a gigantic network of car dealerships, and GM itself, with hiring and firing authority from top to bottom. This goes way beyond mere corruption of the political process, into a transformation of public-private relations – even as the Fed is gradually being transformed before our eyes into the 3rd Bank of the United States, and Congress via TARP yields its constitutional responsibilities and powers to virtually unsupervised and uncontrollable executive branch officials.
One hesitates to bring up fascist economics for fear of being branded an alarmist, or Alexander Hamilton and Nicholas Biddle for fear of being declared irrelevant, but it is no exaggeration to see corporatism on this level as a direct threat to American democracy. It doesn’t matter whether or not Barack Obama, Timothy Geithner, and Ben Bernanke are decent, trustworthy men: We’re on the way to oligarchy, under whatever name and in whatever guise.
Ford and others may even like the prospect of competing with Federal Motors — for a while. But it’s already indirectly financing the bailout of its competitor along with the rest of us, and whatever GM is forced to do will distort what Ford can do, even before legislation or future executive fiat (that’s little f Fiat, though the involvement of Fiat is kind of ironic). Can you really sustain a marketplace that’s half-slave and half-free over the long term?
