I could have sworn, right at the very top of FDR's 'List of Mixed Economizer Things To Do' was the following, in bold print:

1] Lookout for monopolies, concentrated power.

Apparently, adding 'guns' to monopolists makes them invisible to our Mixed Economizer Radar.

How else to explain an SEC EXEMPT, AGENCY RATED FNMA/GNMA given free rein to over-ride 50 sets of more stricter state banking and lending regulations, in order to run a massively singular OneSizeFitsAll experiment?

How else to explain an SEC EXEMPT, AGENCY RATED FNMA/GNMA given free rein to help create the financial engineering genius of 'securitized mortgage bundles?'

Read the fine print on all that FNMA/GNMA paper.  "Not backed by the US Govt."   Wink-wink.  I mean, what else did we just do, if not back them up?

Somewhere in the last 50 years or so, I missed an entire meeting.  It used to be, our FDR inspired Mixed Economy Angels used to be self tasked with reining in dangerous monopolies.   You know, in order to 'save capitalism.'     Somewhere along the line, it became the mission of our CronyFest on the Potomac to instead prop up monopolistic entities 'too big to let fail,' governed mostly by how firmly those cronies were connected at the hip between Wall Street and K-Street.  That is now the purpose for taxing 300,000,000 bewildered serfs, once Americans; to prop up a tiny handful of entities 'too big to let fail', who, if their names were to be double spaced on a single sheet of paper, would not fill up 1/4 of the page, in that nation of 300,000,000 people.

Seriously...that's capitalism?

No. That is connected at the hip Wall Street/K-Street cronyism, our own soft fascism, and here is where it came from.

It came from necessity.  It came from do or die.   When the Greatest Generation borrowed the equivalent of over $3T in today's dollars to unleash the Arsenal of Democracy, when that nation half our present size placed over 16 million of themselves into uniform to face down meat eating totalitarian alternatives, when it left over 400,000 of themselves in a meatgrinder to help create the free world, it by necessity stood up our own soft fascist beast, by welding up the guns of government to business and industry.  It not only enabled every free world economic opportunity that was created since, it also created IKE's MIC, our very own soft fascist CronyFest on the Potomac, saluting the flag all along the money gauntlet.

The children and grandchildren of the Greatest Generation should be very glad they did, but we children had an obligation to oversee the stand down of our own by necessity soft fascist beast, and we failed at that.   There is not a special breed of people that live only in Europe called 'the fascists' that run amok every so often.  'The fascists' are who will come sprinting out of any tribe of on average, average naked sweaty apes whenever the tribe unfetters the state for its latest really good cause.

In the Disneyland of post WWII America, where almost anything went, almost anything did, but not for long.   What remained of capitalism, in the face of soft fascist enabled massive do or die Arsenal of Democracy group projects like GM and Bethlehem Steel,  became too much like carcass carving capitalism, and not enough like once beast building capitalism.   To be a beast building capitalist in a tribe of carcass carving capitalists is to ask to be eaten alive by parasites, and that wasn't the only form of 'anything goes' parasitism that was tolerated during the good times.   Increasingly, America's self acclaimed best and brightest sprinted from places like the Ivys to Wall Street to stare at the scoreboard and bet on the game using OPM, coupled with self made if insane 3000% leverage rules, permitting the 'financial industry' to carve carcass out of seemingly thin air and ride the beast, while those with actual skin in the game were limited by more reasonable 15% asset value leverage rules.  No wonder the wunder kids sprinted to Wall Street, it was manufacturing money out of thin air.

Once healthy beasts/economies tolerated a fair amount of such carcass carving parasitism, until the bones began to show, and began to show long have they.

It is not that risk takers have lost their confidence in themselves, or their ability to access risk and risk their own skin, betting on the future of our economies.   It is much more the case that, risk takers have lost their confidence in the tribe, and the free-for-some it is trying to throw.   Who wants to risk future skin building beast in this graceless, clawing mess the tribe is trying to throw?   At most, there are currently side bets going on regarding its latest cycle of decay, relative eddies of running downhill fast.

Carcass carving requires a carcass to carve.  Parasitism requires a living beast.  Staring at the scoreboard and betting on the game, once long ago, actually required folks in the game.   Not today, but then again, not for long, either.    The carcass carvers and parasites are acting as if beast builders can't help themselves, they will always build the beast.   That is, if they even think about it that deeply.   Most of them probably believe in the government's ability to actually just print money to solve this crisis of confidence.   I guess we are going to find out if such crap as this can float forever.

Into this burning house of carcass carving, set afire by the melding of monopolists with guns, a confused nation cries out for the arsonists to please put out the fire.   Just like, Germany in the '20s.    Only this time, modernity being what it is, we are giving them all Mobil Speedpasses.

Both wings of the National Party circled the wagons, because recognizing 'the crisis', they knew that 'something had to be done.'   The crisis was, the future of their gig as 'THE ECONOMY' runners.  That is why the Democrats and the GOP circled the wagons, to save their gig, and keep the CronyFest on the Potomac well fed.  Our well intentioned soft fascist beast is not going to self devolve gracefully.  It has the guns, it has the printing presses, it has the entrenched megalomania.   It will bring the nation to its knees, and cling to power until its fingers bleed, long before it devolves and recognizes that it is exactly monopolists with guns that is tubing our economies.

So, duck.

reguarda,
Frediano