United States of France

A while back, rather as a joke, I sent a couple of my friends this article from Time Magazine, entitled 'How we became the United States of France,' in which author Bill Saporito pens a hilarious comparison of how U.S. capitalism is on the verge of becoming even more neo-socialist than the French economy. Two months ago the U.S. Treasury and the Fed bailed out Wall Street, and in the process they nationalized America's big banks and its largest insurer, AIG. At the time I decried that as making little economic sense, especially the way they were doing it, by having the Treasury directly buy bad mortgage securities from the banks.

Today the U.S. is nationalizing its Big 3 carmakers, GM, Chrysler and Ford, through ginormous loans with complete oversight from the government attached to them. This of course makes little economic sense either, as that money would be better spent on education and heck-the U.S. might just as well invest it in Google and other tech stocks at a bargain price today. The justification behind it is of course the threat of losing 5m jobs tied to the auto sector. But even this is nonsense, as according to that logic you might as well bail out the entire U.S. economy. What about small businesses having to lay off their hard-working, non-union employees? they too might like to get bailed out, somehow. Plus, I do think bankruptcy would be the best way to force the automakers to restructure at once anyway.

But big shareholders would lose out big time and the U.S. goverment once again can't get used to the idea of letting fat investors lose their poorly-invested money. On top of that, this bail out of American car companies is sending a terrible message to their foreign competitors such as Toyota and Honda, who now build their cars in assembly lines located on U.S. soil and have created just as many jobs as GM has-and their cars don't totally suck.

Just to entice the reader, here's quoting the first paragraph of Saporito's hilarious sendup of America's new-found love of socialism:

How we became the United States of France

by Bill Saporito

This is the state of our great republic: We've nationalized the financial system, taking control from Wall Street bankers we no longer trust. We're about to quasi-nationalize the Detroit auto companies via massive loans because they're a source of American pride, and too many jobs — and votes — are at stake. Our Social Security system is going broke as we head for a future in which too many retirees will be supported by too few workers. How long before we have national health care? Put it all together, and the America that emerges is a cartoonish version of the country most despised by red-meat red-state patriots: France. Only with worse food.

Have a good laugh, read the rest =)