The Rise of US Socialism

I guess the Fed has decided to throw out all of those old fashioned capitalistic principles that our country was founded on. With the US taxpayer funded bailouts of Bear Sterns, Fannie May, Freddie Mac, and now AIG along with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars now loaned out to banks like WAMU backed by worthless mortgage securities, the US is looking more and more like the communist USSR than the world leader of capitalism and democracy. The Federal government now owns about 1/3 of the nations' rapidly foreclosing homes and condominiums (about 5 trillion dollars worth), backs our insurance policies, provides our retirement income and medical care, and so much more. Where is all the money coming from to fund these vast programs you might wonder, out of thin air... borrowing, borrowing and more borrowing. The federal government deficit for 2009 is estimated to be in the neighborhood of 1/2 trillion excluding the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and based on the governments "funny" accounting rules. However, including the military operations and using more traditional accounting rules, that number is more likely in the trillions. In fact, according to most intelligent economists, including Alan Greenspan himself, federal deficit spending is completely unsustainable. Unfortunately our politicians don't have the moral courage to do anything about it... instead they prefer to dig our country deeper and deeper into a hole that we will never be able to escape.