And he wasn't talking about Nationalized banks which would be much worse the privately owned banks.
:Why?
Privately owned banks are answerable to shareholders, and those shareholders can respond instanteneously when the banks get out of line. If the banks start to fail, shareholders dump their ownership and the banks either fail or make changes to get healthy again.
When Nationalized businesses, including banks get out of line and start to fail, the Government just steals more private money from the public and dumps it back into those bad banks. Amtrak is a classic example of a Government trying to run what should be a private business. Government has NO business running businesses. Perhaps imposing some regulations, but not actually running those busineses. Private businesses fail all the time because of bad decisions. Government businesses are NEVER allowed to fail, no matter how rotten or corrupt they are. They are perpetuated by Government theft from private citizens that have no say in the matter, unlike businesses who have shareholders.
I would like anyone to show me ANY business the Government has run that was run better in the hands of Government than in private hands.
:When Fannie and Freddie actually were run by the gov, they were profitable. It was the privatization that turned out to be disastrous.
They had a different role when they were run by the government between the Great Depression and 1968. It was the Clinton administration in 1999 that put heavy pressure on those Organizations to make mortgage loans to unworthy borrowers. They may have been privately owned, but the Government still pulled important strings and those organizations had to bow to Government demands. The Government created those Corporations and they could have wiped them out, too. They wouldn't be in the mess they are now in if do gooder Liberals in Government hadn't pressured them into make unsound business decisions for political gains. Private businesses make business decisions, NOT for political reasons or political gain, but for financial reasons. Government businesses make business decisions and put their political reaons above sound business reasons.
If that argument cannot convince you the Government has no business running businesses, then just go home and re-read Marx and Engels and continue to live in a utopia that looks good on paper, but only on paper.
: Medicare. The portion of Medicare that was recently privatised is sloppy and wasteful.
Medicare fraud costs the taxpayers dozens of billions of dollars a year and that had been happening decades before any part of Medicare was privatized.
:There is a difference between the government running something, and running it well.
Yes, there is. They are mutually exclusive.
: That is what we should be focused on, not privatization, which takes all power from the people and puts it into the hands of individuals.
Right. We should focus on Communism which takes all power from the people and gives it to the Government, who are supposed to be servants of the people; individuals whose sole motivation is to stay in power and keep in power and take power from the people, and in which business profit takes second place to their keeping power.
:Deregulation over the past 30 years has brought us to near ruin, as this fine fellow recently had to admit
Of course, you have set up a rather flimsy strawman here, beks. Government regulation of some businesses is NOT the same thing as government Nationalization and ownership of private busineses.
In the Soviet Union, ALL businesses were owned, managed and run by the Government, and we all know what a great model that was for the Soviet Economy. Or have you forgotten what history should have taught you?
I know I am wasting my time here, so I will say no more. Barack thinks we can tax our way into prosperity. I think prosperity will only come when the Government gets the hell out of our lives and does only what the Constitution said it should do. Being a financial nanny for loser businesses, by theft of treasure from innocent citizens is not one of the things the Constitution charges the Government to do.
Farkel
