Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Socialism - FOR THE RICH...
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AMY GOODMAN: Maybe injecting a little humor here, could this lead to single-payer healthcare? I mean, we’re talking about nationalizing of insurance.
NOMI PRINS: You might as well nationalize insurance.
AMY GOODMAN: And why does that have to be humorous?
NOMI PRINS: Well, no, exactly right. If you’re effectively nationalizing a portion of the banking—you’re nationalizing the worst portion of the banking system is what you’re effectively nationalizing. But you’re not even doing that, because you’re not running as a public entity. You’re taking on risk you won’t be able to understand, and you’re not even trying to. So it’s even more dangerous.
With health insurance, which actually those companies have not sort of been involved in this, because they haven’t had the same derivatives, type of financial services, speculative activity that AIG has under its umbrella, which is the real reason it is imploding, you could actually put some money into something that preempts a problem happening and helps people get healthcare.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you see has to happen now? And are we going to see a lot more banks going down, Professor Hudson?
MICHAEL HUDSON: You’ll see big fish eat little fish. The strong are going to win out. The people who are not going to be bailed out are going to be the pension funds, the labor funds, the small investors. You’re going to—the government has come down on the side of the sharks. And what they did yesterday is to lock in and prevent any Democratic administration from coming in and cleaning up the mess. The people who’ve made the mess are now in control.
AMY GOODMAN: But Obama is not against this.
MICHAEL HUDSON: You know, that’s true. He is not against it, and it was, after all, a Democratic president, Clinton, who repealed Glass-Steagall. And it was a Democratic Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, who supported all of this. So they’re the—
AMY GOODMAN: Top adviser to Obama.
MICHAEL HUDSON: That’s right, the Treasury secretary. Yes, and still the top adviser. So, you’ve had both—I guess you could say the Republicans are a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street, the Democrats are a partially owned subsidiary.
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