After telling us repeatedly in recent weeks that the banks were NOT bailed out, today, 45 minutes into the show, Rush Limbaugh is quoting approvingly from Dan Hannan here at the UK Daily Telegraph, telling us capitalism hasn't been practised here for three years, what with all the bailouts and the like.
Talk about turning on a dime.
Rush's defense of the banks has been that American banks didn't need bailouts (TARP), took them and paid them back because they were intimidated by the Feds.
This continues to misrepresent TARP, and miss the scope of the bailouts, which were a series of massive, sustained behind-the-scenes loan operations at rock-bottom rates in the trillions of dollars. TARP was a puny fraction of the total loaned by the Federal Reserve.
The same pattern is now repeating in the EU crisis, with the Fed loaning dollars ultra-cheap to EU banks.
This is not a free market in banking, and it hasn't been since 1913.
Taxpayers shouldn't be backstopping any banks, who have been cut loose by Republicans and Democrats to play with your money, your bonds and stocks, and your mortgages. When they succeed, they pocket the profits. When they fail, you pay.
You are subsidizing the success of the business model of the banks, and accepting the risk for its failure.
You are subsidizing the success of the business model of the banks, and accepting the risk for its failure.
Rush appears to be too goofed up to grasp this, besides the fact that to do so means to repudiate the accomplishments of Republicans like Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich, whose power and influence were exercised to pass the legislation in the 1990s which has brought us to this pass.
