According to Wikipedia, the phrase “privatizing profits and socializing losses” refers to any instance of speculators benefiting (privately) from profits, but not taking losses, by pushing the losses onto society at large, particularly via the government. I give it an even shorter name. I call it getting Versailled, as in the French royal palace Versailles — the epitome of excess of the French aristocracy in the Courts of Louis XV and XVI during the 18th century. The excesses of the French monarchy caused enough economic pressure on the working classes to instigate what was finally the rise of the violent revolt that would usurp the French aristocracy.
That revolt followed a period of Pluto, the planet of compelling change, in Capricorn, the sign of institutions like government and banking. How apropos then that three years into this current ingress of Pluto into Capricorn, we get to witness the workings of the American and international oligarchy in cahoots with the US government to pocket our tax dollars?
How utterly aristocratic are our modern-day courtiers who preside over the board rooms as masters of the universe, also known as Wall Street executives. Their dealings are portrayed in Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article The Real Housewives of Wall Street, which brings to light the theft of taxpayer dollars, pouring like a “waterfall” into the hands of two of the wives of the very rich, through a TALF (Term Asset-backed Securities Loan Facility) handout to Wall Street approved during the sunset months of the Bush Administration. Here’s an excerpt:
America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. The official budget is public record and hotly debated: Money comes in as taxes and goes out as jet fighters, DEA agents, wheat subsidies and Medicare, plus pensions and bennies for that great untamed socialist menace called a unionized public-sector workforce that Republicans are always complaining about. According to popular legend, we’re broke and in so much debt that 40 years from now our granddaughters will still be hooking on weekends to pay the medical bills of this year’s retirees from the IRS, the SEC and the Department of Energy.