Title of the actual article:
"The Trump administration's move to take stakes in companies across industries may soon have a new target — nuclear power."
Click on the following hyperlink to access the actual news article and video:
Commentary:
Why is the Trump MAGA presidential administration using taxpayer money to rescue, prop up, support and be the guarantor of financially precarious and failing US corporate, other business and industry giants?
Regardless of what the MAGA gaslighting secretaries of the US Commerce and Treasury Departments say, the central principle of the communist state is that the state owns and controls the means of production and property of the nation in the service of the people, on the whole, in the identity of the state, or nation-state. In fascism, totalitarian dictatorship [and oligarchy], private industry and oligarchy, on the one hand, and the state, on the other hand, are merged and the people, the common people in practice, are subjects of and serve the nation-state and this merger. Both are innovatively and technologically, apart from militarily, sluggish and narrow in scope compared to competitive, free-market, free-enterprise democratic and democratic-socialist nation-states that outlaw monopoly and quasi-monopoly economic enterprise and unfair and corrupt economic or business competition (the Peoples Republic of China is now a mixed-economy, an overlapping communist, private-enterprise and state-capitalism, nation-state and is at least as societally, scientifically and technologically innovative and competitive as the most materially and functionally developed democratic-capitalist or democratic-socialist nation-states). This MAGA model of the state (government) and taxpayer rescue or protective money buying of an ownership share in enterprises or industries, particularly in financially shaky and needy ones, is MAGA-oligarchical socialism for the investor-class rich and powerful cocooning themselves as such investors and giant enterprises or industries in the protection and safety of taxpayer money and a budding fascist state founded on and supported by that taxpayer money -- first it actually recently happened for Intel Inc. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimosman/2025/02/17/intels-decline-a-cautionary-tale-for-technology-investors/, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/intel-growth-challenges-not-over-221609444.html, https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/intel-accelerates-chips-act-funding-receives-5-7b-ahead-of-schedule/ar-AA1LxwFQ?ocid=socialshare , Intel Awarded Biggest CHIPS and Science Act Grant to Date - Alliance for American Manufacturing) and now it is being considered by the MAGA presidency for a host of companies, which, as relates to them, is to save face for MAGA and shield it from attribution, that is, to hide the business-failure fallout that is a result of the economic incompetence and failure of Trumpian maganomics policy for the US economy, which is harmful to much of US big business and industry as well as employment and consumers. Additional links on Intel Inc.'s financial condition over the last two years are: Intel's Stock Tumbles Amid Worries Some of Its Problems 'May Not Be Fixable' (investopedia.com), https://finance.yahoo.com/news/intel-trouble-5-things-tech-100100605.html, For Intel's Stock, It's Been 'One Disaster After Another' (investopedia.com).
In the atypical situation of Intel Inc., if because of its already federally recognized special technological value to the nation of the USA warranting that it receive a virtually national-security-related federal Chips and Science Act grant for the specific purpose of it enhancing and expanding the production of its nationally vital silicon chips technology, then it should be awarded the federal grant money of its Chips and Science Act grant for it to use to fulfill its contracted or otherwise agreed upon grant purpose pertaining to the Act, according to the scheduled, or adjustably scheduled, release of the funds to it, Intel Inc. However, the federal government's purchased equity ownership share in certifiably financially troubled Intel Inc., in which, according to the financial news reports on Intel Inc., it has scaled down rather than scaled up its research-and-development and manufacturing operations as well as its staff for accomplishing these missions as required of it by its Chips and Science Act grant agreement, is an evident workaround its in-process failure to meet its commitment to fulfilling its grant specific purpose for qualifying to receive the large-majority remainder balance of the grant and is an alternative funding avenue for nevertheless providing Intel Inc. with money it needs to survive or better make its way financially, in the name of or in reference to the Chips and Science Act, rather than to fulfill its Chips and Science Act grant-contingent specific purpose. Lutnick asserted to the effect that a Trumpian maganomics re-rendering of the Chips and Science Act funding for Intel Inc. was doing a better job financially for the American people, a stance which, in view of Intel Inc.'s downsizing of its operations and staff, held no sincere and factual substance since Intel Inc. no longer qualified to receive the balance of the Chips and Science Act contingent-grant funding set aside for it. In addition, the federal government's purchased equity stake in Intel Inc. insulated Intel Inc. (thus protecting its assets from being collateral) from having to secure a collateralized loan from a lender. US Commerce Secretary Lutnick has already discredited his character and credibility and shown himself to be a callous, dismissive, cavalier and condescending glib-tongued and haughty rube in the broadcast mass media on the subject of missed or late monthly Social Security retirement checks to senior retirees, often survivally living check to check. Click on the following audio-video hyperlink to listen to Lutnick's salesmanship clever sophistry in justifying the Trumpian maganomics-led federal government buying an equity stake in (supplying Chip's Act workaround money to) Intel Inc., https://youtu.be/GSiZmEszflo?si=biyHD3O9OLkKElTV.
If these MAGA presidential administration gaslighters say that the taxpayer money is not to financially rescue or make the companies financially secure, then why is the taxpayer money being provided to them in exchange for a US government ownership stake in them? Don't be gaslighted and suckered by them. If MAGA did not rescue or stabilize them financially and they failed in a rash of big business and industry failures under maganomics, the MAGA presidential administration would be blamed for the rash, or worse, of the failures.
The only rational reason, even if a corrupt one, for the government purchasing an ownership stake in a company rather than providing it with a loan contingent on a loan contract with the therein stated and agreed-to loan's repayment terms and the company or its specified equitable assets pledged as foreclosure and sell-off collateral in the event of the company's default in meeting the terms of the loan contract, as is the standard practice with commercial lenders that provide loans to businesses and real property owners (real estate owners), would be for the government to more corruptly, as an act of government and/or political cronyism or favoritism, shelter the company from having to repay the money supplied to it by the government in the form of a loan and from having to pledge and risk itself or its specified assets as loan repayment collateral to either the government or, alternatively and more appropriately in exchange for a loan from it, a private commercial lender.
As a matter of unquestionable ethics and fairness in government policies and practices, government should never purchase an ownership stake in any company and should not issue a loan to a large business outside of a government lending program that is available to all large businesses as applicants, inasmuch as the Small Business Administration already has a lending program for small business applicants, and issues loans based on qualifying financial merit and loan collateral. The same general but scaled-up criteria should apply for a government loan program for large businesses.
When government vests itself financially in a company with its money, really taxpayer money in a democracy (for the USA, a Constitutional Bill of Rights (thereby Democratic-) Republic), by supplying the company significant money for an ownership stake in the company, it assumes a vested interest in protecting the financial solvency, profitability and marketplace competitive strength or advantage of that company and becomes the enduring, if not also the de-facto insuring, financial spigot of that company in its financially troubled or competitively adverse times.
Would the financial marriage or bonded relationship between the government and the company give the company and its principals special, undue access to and influence in or on government compared to companies and their top executives, governing board members and major investors without such a relationship with government? Would companies controlled or owned by family members, friends, associates, political, partisan-politics or personal financial donors or allies of elected or unelected government officials or employees, relevant or irrelevant to the decision-making process, or others connected to any of these, be chosen or given special consideration for such a relationship with government? Would the US Congress legislate a strict and harshly enforceable law prohibiting government officials and employees and their relatives and business and financial associates from, directly or indirectly, engaging any in, or any combination of them of, buying, selling, owning, trading or brokering stock or bond interests (equity instruments) or any other financial interest in a company with a government investment or ownership interest in it, as well as barring them from employment in or contracting with such a company? Could this merged government-business relationship become a practice at all levels of government -- federal, state and local -- and become acceptably the norm at taxpayer-money expense?
If applicable companies are proven financially sound, according to an external audit of the companies and their externally audited historical-to-date financial records, then they do not need and should not receive such taxpayer money. If their financial condition is determined to be problematic, then they should not receive such taxpayer money, either. In any case, if they want or need money, let them apply for a loan for the desired money to lending institutions or sources that serve businesses, as is and has been the norm historically.
This dubious relationship between government and businesses or industries is not analogous to that of the government making loans to financial-condition qualifying small businesses through the Small Business Administration (SBA) or providing seed-money grants and tax breaks, etc., to kickstart start-up companies of new industries, such as wind-turbine-energy, solar-energy, geothermal-energy, biofuels and electric-vehicle companies, as well as to medical and other vital scientific research-development-and-innovation institutions or companies broadly, overall, benefitting US society -- prospectively, as worthy award applicants, since the US Congressional Chips and Science Act of 2022, able to receive federal funding, CHIPS and Science Act Summary: Energy, Climate, and Science Provisions Bipartisan Policy Center.
No comments:
Post a Comment