There is a lot we don't know yet about the FED's 79.9% stake in AIG. But we do know that the FED's rescue of AIG has enormous implications. Allegedly, AIG wrote nearly a half trillion dollars of credit derivative insurance on the viability of businesses throughout the world. We need to understand how far this ownership goes beyond symbolism and bridge financing. The U.S. taxpayer may be assuming a big chunk of liability for world commerce, and in the face of a credit contraction that will bring down global businesses.
What will happen a few years from now when the U.S. government is in the hole that AIG fell into? We've come to realize that the Bush administration coveted the role of nation building. But did they intend to make Uncle Sam hold up the whole earth, like a proverbial Atlas? What happens when Uncle Sam cries ‘uncle'? Could a U.S. financial default lead to a global nuclear war as nations scramble to determine who owns infrastructure, natural resources, capital assets, and liabilities, too?
The mentally indolent American electorate will sell everything — the national constitution along with the autonomy of economy policy — in the hope of a continuation of their materialism and pleasures. But we may not even be given a choice, certain elites knowing that the electorate will be compliant in the main. Indeed, we may be told after the fact, like with AIG, that a FED decision has been made, period! Then will come the revelation of where the darkest of deep pockets are concealed — pockets of plutocratic wealth to which the FED sells itself, allegedly to save the nation but not really. (Granted, centralized banking could be put on honorable footings if the electorate understood the institution rightly.)
For a long time deep pockets have been amassing wealth for the purpose of providing an economic lifeline to repair the world on their terms in due season. Strangely, though, the repairs may not ‘take' — failing like a skin graft fed with blood too cold. Watch the wounded world stagger from there until the healing dawn of a new day.
So, what are honest Americans to do but live benevolently for that new dawn, preparing the next generation to be people of altruism, and constitution building, after the storms have passed. Teach a rational, intellectually productive gospel, not the silly religion of the age. Fight honorably with the pen, following the Publius example of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers. Prepare to take back your country by lawful, peaceful means after greedy elites have demonstrated to all watchers the immorality and indecency of trying to take the world surreptitiously by Machiavellian means. Find a higher ethic, like that attributed to Sir Thomas More in the 1966 Fred Zinneman movie, "A Man for All Seasons": ‘I think none harm, I do none harm....' Like More, we can retain the ethic while resisting the tyrant.