Charles writes:
I'm not sure about this, but I don't recall an American tradition of any discussion of public ownership to revive except of course in the tiny socialiist and Communist left. Anarchist/libertarians are against government ownership, I believe. Well, actually, the federal government did some "commandeering" of the private sector during WWII.
Not to exaggerate, but the IWW and Debs' SP were not without influence in the period before the First World War, and the CP and Norman Thomas' SP were not without influence within the trade unions and the intelligensia during the 30's through World War II. US social democrats circulated the British Labour party program calling for nationalization of the commanding heights and state planning, while American Marxists and fellow travellers promoted the Soviet model. The TVA was as American as apple pie, and many New Dealers pressed for the extension of public ownership into the nascent broadcasting and airlines industries, as in Canada. So public ownership (in the sense we mean it) is not a wholly alien concept in US political history.
On the Constitutional question that Sandwichman raised, there is Eminent Domain. If the feds give the banks billions, that would constitute the just compensation, so no violation of the Takings Clause. If the banks are insolvent, then their fair market value wouldn't be that much , so there wouldn't have to be just compensation.
The "good bank" idea, ie. a new state bank, proposed by Buiter and others makes more sense to me. Why bother taking over the big private banks like Citicorp and B of A or, even worse - as the administration proposes - to try to breathe new life into the zombies by taking their worthless assets off their hands and parking them in a "bad bank" at a huge cost to the public? If the banks are nationalized, the shareholders and creditors will almost certainly get the state to overvalue the assets and overcompensate them. I'm sure you will not like their definition of "just compensation". Better to just let the banks sit on their garbage until they are forced to file for bankruptcy, and have a new massively capitalized state bank lend directly to those in need, no? It may be the least likely outcome, but as the state bank idea is already being floated in elite circles, it does provide an opening to promote it more widely. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
