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HT to Anthony Ivancich. What will my special treatment be for printing this? The din of suppression of speech is rising – I feel like I am in the beginning of an Orwell novel.

To My Fellow Citizens:

Please be advised that effective immediately (i) the economic system heretofore known as “Capitalism” in the United States of America shall now be known as “Government Capitalism”, and (ii) the following rules, to the extent not already in effect, shall be implemented immediately.

1. Any person who purchased a home or other real property without sufficient income to afford the mortgage payments and/or without sufficient documentation of his income, and/or who was advised by a mortgage broker or lender that his mortgage could be refinanced in the future because real estate values always go up in value (and without question accepted such assumption as valid because of greed, stupidity or ignorance), shall be entitled to a modification of his mortgage to the extent necessary to ensure that the owner will not only be able to make the modified loan payments based on a reduced principal amount, but also will be entitled to realize all of the profit generated from a future sale of the property without having to repay the amount of the reduction of the mortgage. The cost of the mortgage reduction shall be absorbed by such person’s neighbors and other taxpayers, who have continued to pay their mortgages without government assistance and who only purchased properties they could actually afford based on their incomes.

2. All banks and other financial institutions that failed to properly manage their risk and instead sought to increase their profits by use of excessive leverage that was based on a continued increase in the value of real estate, and whose failure would cause “systemic risk”, as arbitrarily defined by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve (since no written definition thereof exists, or if it does nobody knows how to apply it except arbitrarily), shall be entitled to billions if not trillions of dollars of government bailouts to create the artifice of solvency. The U.S. Government will increase the deficit by up to or exceeding $2 trillion in the next fiscal year (and trillions more in subsequent fiscal years) by borrowing money from the OPEC nations, China and Japan and other countries that currently maintain massive trade surpluses with the U.S.

3. In addition to U.S. Government borrowings, the Federal Reserve will print money to the extent necessary to fund any shortfall from the aforesaid borrowings. In addition, the Federal Reserve shall continue to loan trillions of dollars to the mismanaged financial institutions to guarantee that they make profits in the future at the expense of the American taxpayers and of retirees and other individuals who prudently saved money (“Risk-Averse Investors”) on which they were anticipating a reasonable rate of return to fund their ongoing living expenses without having to deplete their principal balances.

4. Any financial institution that was insolvent based on FASB mark-to-market accounting rules in effect until FASB buckled under political pressure and quickly changed them, and which received U.S. Government and Federal Reserve assistance shall remain in existence. Shareholders whose interests were actually worth nothing and were not entitled to retain an ownership stake in such insolvent institutions without infusion of additional capital from them, will nevertheless continue to own their shares in such institution on a diluted basis. Such dilution shall be as little as possible even though private investors in such institutions received or would receive a much higher percentage ownership of in exchange for the same level government assistance in such institutions, whether in the form of bailouts or continuing policies to funnel money to such institutions by the manipulation of interest rates by the Federal Reserve at the expense of, among others, the Risk-Averse Investors.

5. If a federally-chartered bank is sufficiently large so as to possibly cause said systemic risk, the FDIC will not declare the bank insolvent under any circumstances. The U.S. Government via the Treasury Department, in conjunction with the Federal Reserve and and the FDIC will devise a plan to manipulate the bond market and the stock market to benefit those parties who are the least deserving of assistance.

6. In accordance with Rule 5 above and as alluded to elsewhere above, the U.S. will never wipe out shareholders and become the 100% owner of in an insolvent bank because to do so would require the exercise of honest judgment and transparent economic policies and equal treatment amongst all banks.

7. Any secured lender of an automotive company filing for bankruptcy protection such as Chrysler or General Motors, shall not be entitled to a greater return as a result of its secured position as compared to unsecured lenders or trade unions possessing unsecured claims. In fact, such a secured creditor requesting a greater return on account of its secured interest shall be ostracized by the Federal Government and shall be treated as a scapegoat by an over-reaching Executive Branch.

8. Any automotive company filing for bankruptcy due, in part, to rising health care costs, exorbitant union benefits as compared to non-bankrupt automotive companies and excessive corporate taxes, all of which costs impede the ability of U.S. car manufacturers to compete effectively in the global market, shall be entitled to sell all of their viable assets via a government-sponsored sale, the end result of which will ensure either majority control of the reorganized entity by the U.S. Government or the United Auto Workers or some combination of both.

9. Any government-sponsored bankruptcy sale in an automotive bankruptcy case shall not be required to distribute the proceeds thereof or such other value obtained for the bankrupt’s assets pursuant to the the various contracts and agreements of the subject automotive company or the priorities established by the Bankruptcy Code and longstanding legal precedent unless the government, in its sole discretion, decides to abide by the law.

10. Any Risk-Averse Investor or responsible banking institution shall be required to bear the cost of the foregoing policies along with the American taxpayers. No Wall Street executive or other highly-compensated individual of those institutions shall be required to disgorge any bonus payments made with respect to highly speculative transactions which ultimately contributed to the insolvency of those institutions absent government bailouts.

11. In addition to the recent change of the FASB mark-to-market accounting rules that required an institution to write-down the value of real estate to the best estimate of its current market value based on actual real estate transactions occurring in the marketplace, all new accounting rules and regulations by FASB shall permit irresponsible banks to reflect real estate assets on their books based upon a fantasy model of the value of such assets in the future and the assumptions underlying such fantasy valuations shall remain within the sole discretion of such financial institutions that were unable to manage their risk properly in the first place.

12. The term “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles” shall be changed to “Sometimes We Feel Like A Nut And Sometimes We Don’t Accepted Accounting Principles. The organization called the Financial Accounting Standards Board or FASB, as referred to above, shall hereafter be referred to as the Insipid Financial Board of Standards or “IF-B.S.”.

13. This is just a preliminary list of the rules of new Government Capitalism that will go into effect. Additional rules will be adopted and implemented if and when any of either the U.S. Government, Treasury Department, Federal Reserve or FDIC have a wild hair up their respective posterior.

We welcome suggestions for further changes to the previous system of Capitalism in order to conform more closely with the principles and philosophical foundations of Government Capitalism. We look forward to working with you to develop as many regulations as possible so as to undermine the principles of Capitalism that have led to the unprecedented and unequalled economic success of the U.S. since its formation.

Good luck on surviving the new Government Capitalism without filing for bankruptcy, losing your job or the value of a substantial portion of your net worth due to massive inflation in the coming years,

Uncle Sam

One Response to “13 Rules of Government Capitalism”

  1. Harry says:

    You got on some list for posting this heresy, Wintercow. Forget a job at Princeton, at least for two years.

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