We have all been reading about how President Elect Obama is a socialist in disguise and will almost certainly ruin this great Country of ours when he takes office on January 20, 2009 (a date still way too far off for my comfort). Yet the ruin of this country has almost come to fruition after eight years of W and the socialization of this country began many weeks ago first with the acquisition of just under 80% of AIG (under 80% you understand is a number that keeps AIG's toxic asset collection off the US Treasury' books - a neat accounting trick just like those used by real industries). It has continued with acquisitions of troubled banks which are "too big to fail." Now that the United States Government is an investor in private industry, I would like to suggest that, as long as tax dollars are being given away with wild abandon, some proportion of those tax dollars be put toward a profitable enterprise.
I don't pretend to understand exactly how the investment banks and the regular banks and the sub-prime lenders and Fannie Mae Freddie Mac and AIG got us here despite my BA in economics and my 18 years as a litigator and a real estate attorney but reading Michael Lewis certainly helps .
What I do understand is that somehow President Elect Obama must start digging the USA out of the mess he has just inherited. Since the oil companies are so insanely profitable due to the excess generosity of the lame duck President Bush and his Mob, it seems to me to be an eminently reasonable reaction to force Exxon Mobil and the rest of the environmental pirates out their to repay their unreasonable profits by the simple action of having Mr. Paulson or his successor force a sale of a controlling interest in all those oh so profitable energy ventures to the Treasury to offset some small proportion of the insanely huge losses the Treasury is going to suffer as a result of acquiring large pieces of banks, insurance companies and whatever else eventually winds up being owned by We the People (read taxpayers).
Now I know this is a fantasy hatched out of my sheer inability to accept that AIG, WAMU, Citibank, Merrill, Bear Stearns (add your favorite corporate name here) were so poorly run that the end result of their incompetence has placed the US economy in the surrealistic position of being engaged in a struggle for survival not unlike Gandalf's fight with the Balrog. But a little bit of frontier justice might at least make my stomach stop churning when I think how little the current government has done to make our Country and the World a better and safer place and how much it has done to enrich its friends, degrade the environment, alienate the world, destroy civil and human rights, cause misery and destruction and generally try and bring about Armageddon.
I think a little balance on the Treasury's balance sheet is in order and Exxon's 3d Quarter profits of $14.8 billion would at least fund NYC's school system for a bit.
UPDATE: Thank you all for taking the time to comment and educate me further.