>You make it sound like Obama went out and took over a bunch of companies in order to move us towards socialism.
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>Actually, it is moving us closer to fascism.
>

You may have topped yourself that one. As Nick was saying of socialism, a lot of people who toss that word around should understand it a little better.

>First, the bailouts began under Bush. (And I agreed with those, too). Second, these companies were absolutely hemorrhaging money and threatening to take the world economy down with them.
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>Nonsense - they should have been allowed to fail. Remember all those billions we gave to Chrysler and GM because "bankruptsy was not an option" ? Well, after throwing billions in the toilet, bankruptsy became an option. It would have been far more efficient to let them go bankrupt to begin with.
>

In isolation I am sure they would have been allowed to fail. But how can you think the simultaneous collapse of a number of our largest institutions would not have been calamitous? It would have been a complete disaster.

>Third, none of these companies are going to remain under government control permanently. As soon as they are healthy enough again they will be back on their own.
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>Baloney! As far as the auto manufacturing industry goes - try looking at what happened in the UK in the 1980's when they adopted a very similar plan to save British LeyLand. Today there is no large scale British auto manufacturing industry - just a few small specialist manufacturers.
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>Those who are unable to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

One of the lessons of history is that future events are often not duplicates of what happened in the past. If they were it would be pretty simple knowing what to do, wouldn't it?