It's not just simple doublespeak, it's double talk.
Let's reiterate Hudson's conclusion- and Floyd's final comment- here:
...Neoliberal denunciations of public regulation and taxation as “socialism” is really an attack on classical political economy – the “original” liberalism whose ideal was to free society from the parasitic legacy of feudalism.
A truly socialized Treasury policy would be for banks to lend for productive purposes that contribute to real economic growth, not merely to increase overhead and inflate asset prices by enough to extract interest charges. Fiscal policy would aim to minimize rather than maximizing the price of home ownership and doing business, by basing the tax system on collecting the rent that is now being paid out as interest. Shifting the tax burden off wages and profits onto rent and interest was the core of classical political economy in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as the Progressive Era and Social Democratic reform movements in the United States and Europe prior to World War I.
But this doctrine and its reform program has been buried by the rhetorical smokescreen organized by financial lobbyists seeking to muddy the ideological waters sufficiently to mute popular opposition to today’s power grab by finance capital and monopoly capital. Their alternative to true nationalization and socialization of finance is debt peonage, oligarchy and neo-feudalism. They have called this program “free markets.”
The brass of our financial elites is awe-inspiring, indeed almost sublime. In broad daylight, they are taking a gargantuan catastrophe -- for which they are to blame, and for which everyone rightly and angrily blames them -- and they are using it to further entrench their power and privilege. That sure is one hell of a trick...and there sure enough will be hell to pay -- for us, not them -- if they can pull it off.
They will, and there will be. Count on it.
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