Part of the fiscal booze-binging described in my previous post, a keg from which many of our governmental and business leaders now quaff with impunity, also involves the enormously expensive propping of financial institutions that you and I are subsidizing as taxpayers. The TARP bailout, and its spin-offs at various scales, is an expression of socialism. This is because the end result will be government controlled banks, which is nationalization. Politicians who voted for that, and their sycophants in the media, can call it by any name, layer it with all sorts of euphemistic spin, but that’s the bottom line. Let’s call the quacking waterbird what it is: a duck. This is socialism!

Now that we’ve found ourselves in this mess, which was highly preventable, we may be stuck with it for awhile. That includes effectively nationalized banking for many of the bigger institutions and some smaller ones. Think back 20-odd years, to the end of the Reagan presidency. Then imagine, just imagine, that in late 2008, a supposedly very conservative Republican President and his liberal Democratic successor would, during their transition, join together in a massive effort to nationalize our biggest banks. It would have been utterly inconceivable!

Karl Denninger, IT systems architecture/security expert and profuse BLOGger on matters regarding our economic system, has put forth a deliciously provocative new idea on how to handle the salaries of those employees of banks that are on the federal umbilical cord: Put all their employees on the government GS and SES pay systems. The basic premise is: Why not? Effectively they now are being subsidized by taxpayers, just like government employees. As long as that’s the case, pay them as such.

I’m not convinced yet of the full merits of this idea, and Denninger has a little more ‘splainin’ to do to justify it. But it the thought is very intriguing to this employee of an unnamed government agency who is paid on the GS scale. I could be convinced to support the notion.

Alternatively, how about paying me like the average big-company banker with the same number of years’ experience (23+) as I have in federal employment. After all, the federal debt doesn’t matter anymore, right? Yee haw!

Thanks to GreggG for sending along that Denninger post.