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A recent pundit on the PBS Lehrer news hour (a prof at a university in NY; someone help me out here with his name) remarked that in propping up Fannie and Freddie and AIG etc. etc. to save them from their own greed and improvidence, the Bush regime was "privatizing profit and socializing loss."-What a wonderful phrase! It just about says it all.
They're "privatizing profit"- by reducing taxes for the very richest and jiggering the tax and regulatory codes so that something like 70 percent of corporations pay no federal taxes whatsoever. Every last bit of their profit remains in their private sector hands.
They're "socializing loss"- by having the government pick it up, which means having all of us (remaining) taxpayers pay for it.
I don't bring this up to commence heavy thoughts here, but to spotlight a formulation so clear, so terse, so punchy that it ought to feature over and over in progressive discussions of the republicans' relentless skewing of the whole economic system toward the very, very few.
The republicans are privatizing profit and socializing loss.
Beats hell out of "Acuna matata."-
