Who “Owns” the Economy, “Owns” You
“He owns the economy.” A very poor choice of words. Hitler “owned” the German economy. Dictator Hugo Chavez “owns” the Venezuelan economy. The Castro brothers “own” the Cuban economy. Vladimir Putin “owns” the Russian economy. One would think that it would occur to Stephanopoulos that this is hardly a flattering thing to attribute to a man he earnestly wishes to be perceived as a “man of the people,” that “owning” an economy is the sign of a dictator.
Of course, “owning” a nation’s economy is simply a crude metaphor for commanding it. No one can “own” an economy. A primitive society whose economy is based on the barter of beads or stones is governed by the same laws of private trade or government intervention or expropriation as an advanced society’s economy whose medium of exchange based on gold, silver, copper or fiat paper. The economy is autonomous and will serve out its own justice. As King Canute of legend could not command the tides to cease, dictators cannot command economies to defy reality and fulfill their wishes, not even when they employ brute force and not stealthy fraud. Reality will always out. A major “drag” on Nazi Germany’s economy, for example, was the cost of exterminating six million Jews together with using slave labor in its war industries, aside from the cost of conquering countries it intended to loot.
Nevertheless, Stephanopoulos and his ilk in and out of government want Obama to command the economy, that is, to tell Americans to behave in ways that will accomplish their fascist ends, to compel them to make decisions and take courses of action they would not otherwise choose to take. By implication, a tyrant who claims to “own” an economy, “owns” you, the private citizen. The contempt which Obama and Congress exhibited for the American people is unbounded but disguised in the alb and cassock of “care” and “concern.”