George Will, socialist interventionist

That socialist bastard George Will is at it again--this time assailing banking oligopoly and financial concentration.

His column is truly remarkable. Such concentration is of course a natural byproduct of an inadequately regulated capitalism--the stronger are forever eating the weaker just barely alive--yet Will must deny its philosophical, causal source. Thus, with great dispatch: "By breaking up the biggest banks, conservatives will not be putting asunder what the free market has joined together. Government nurtured these behemoths by weaving an improvident safety net and by practicing crony capitalism."

And that's that; that is George Will's entire analysis of the truer evil here: government.

Which--and he knows it, hence his aforementioned, under-the-carpet-with-it dispatch--makes him an honorable socialist bastard.

Comments

[AnneJ]

Is he that dumb or is he just insulting our intelligence, like every other phony baloney conservative these days? I've haven't followed George Will very long and I don't really follow him now except when he's mentioned here, but if I wanted to spend the time and energy looking up anything he's said or written in the past, I would bet that he was one of the biggest cheerleaders for deregulation of the banks who made sure all the laws were off the books so that they could abuse consumers with impunity without consequence. And when it all came tumbling down five years ago, I would bet again that he blamed people who bought homes they couldn't afford, and the democrats in congress (especially Barney Frank for some reason) for "forcing" banks to approve loans to unworthy borrowers. That seems to be the running theme in righty world where even the so-called smart conservatives use the same talking points as the rudest of tea party jackasses.

[Turgidson]

And Will is what passes as a conservative "intellectual."

I think to the GOP, "intellectual" has been redefined to mean "insufferably smug, appallingly dishonest hack."

What a steaming pile of nonsense.

[AnneJ]

Turgidson, it seems to me that the right has become everything that they used to accuse the left of being. Or maybe they've always been that way and the constant projection goes back much further than I thought.

[MinneapolisPipe]

Cognitive dissonance.

Or as Jonathan Chait would say: has he gone truly pathological?

[Peter G]

What makes it worse is that he is right. The pattern evident in telecommunications is enlightening. Break up ATT and watch the fragments reaggregate as if capitalist gravity was at work. In banking the most convenient solution to the solvency problems of any given bank is for the government to encourage a buy out or takeover by a stronger bank. Just like with Lehman. Creatve destruction is ome thing governments need to do a little more regularly.