Web Letters | The Nation

Web Letter

Someone needs to do their history homework on Fascism.

None of the Fascist/Nazi states had anything resembling modern Americn or multinational corporations. They didn't exist in those times and places.

Mussolini's "Corporate State" referred to the "body" of the nation's economy (corpo).

Such companies and firms as there were were almost totally reduced to dependency on political directions, or "coordination" (the Nazi term was Gleichchaltung).

The idea of companies controlling politics is the diametric opposite of Fascism! We need a new term to describe such a corporation-dominated system. Whatever it is, it is not remotely compatible with fascism!

Web Letter

I listened to some of the hearings on C-Span.These guys do sound like used-car salesmen, as one of the senators put it.

Web Letter

We need a bank holiday just like FDR instituted. Scheer is right on the money. Instead of a holiday and closing insolvent banks, we just throw money at a desperate situation created by the very corporations that created it.

The height of irony is that they are discussing whether or not the package of taxpayer money is sweet enough for these same banks to accept. Well, this goes beyond the pale. They talk as if these corporations are sovereign countries, not banks incorporated in the United States.

We need a bank holiday to sort out this mess. Until then, any taxpayer relief is just throwing money indiscriminately at the problem.

Web Letter

Mr. Scheer is absolutely right in his analysis of the (hopefully just) attempted corporate takeover of the last vestiges of our glorious Republic--a takeover, I might add, that has been going on for years now, and one wonders if not generations. May we all do our own gut checks and keep a stiff upper lip... as well as figure out a way out of this mess. (Why don't we just back the money markets and lower-valued mortgages and let everything else die? We can all start saving as of midnight tonight.)