The New Capitalism
By Michael Boyajian
The banks in the United States have stopped lending money. This leads one to ask what then is their purpose, to operate ATM machines? What this actually signals is the end of the economic system known as private enterprise capitalism. Government must step in, not entirely but in many instances, to fill the void left behind by banks. The government must start to offer low interest short term loans to small businesses, loans for homeowners and even loans for people to start a business to name but a few products abandoned by the banks.
The federal government should also begin to offer low interest credit cards since the credit card companies no longer seem interested in issuing credit. This is not the arena to explain the whys and wherefores of this retreat from capitalism by lending institutions but rather to ascertain how we will proceed into the future.
So the question begs to be asked, does this signal the rise of communism or socialism in the United States? Certainly not. It just means that the means of capitalism partially shifts from the private sector to the public sector. And by the way, the government can use its profits from these ventures to pay down the deficit.
It is not some kind of hostile government takeover. If that were the case we would seize the oil companies. No, what it means is that the government is filling a void that the banks have created in their retreat from money lending. The government is filling a vacuum in the economy.
With the government in control of lending you will never have to worry about a credit crunch again. Small businesses will not have to worry about finding short term loans to meet their payrolls and because of this they will be able to start hiring people again quickly helping to lower the unemployment rate down to sustainable levels.
The idea of a national bank is not new to our country it has a long history going back to the very founders of the republic. Now some would say that government does not work and therefore cannot be trusted to operate a segment of our economy. It is my experience in government that those who do not believe in government will do whatever it takes to see that it fails. So it is not just capitalism that must change but the very notion that government is bad. After all the government acquired the Louisiana Purchase doubling the size of the country, financed the Transcontinental Railroads, landed a man on the moon in ten years, defeated the Nazis and led us out of the Great Depression.
So let’s tell those remnants of the past, banks, to step aside so that we may enter a new age of prosperity driven by the new economy and begin our climb out of the worst recession in history.
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