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The real 'socialists' here.
The George W. Bush administration handed 125 billion dollars to nine of Wall Street's richest banks, but this will do little to help the economy that is crumbling around ordinary U.S. citizens, independent experts and activists say.
"There is no way a modern economy can function without good roads, telecommunication, rail transport and an educated labour force," Allan Mendelowitz, a member and former chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board, told IPS.
Bush's new Office of Financial Stability, led by Neel Kashkari, sealed a deal Tuesday to provide the billions, plus 125 billion dollars more for small banks, to encourage them to start lending to each other and the world's biggest businesses again.
A freeze in lending, related to the banks' risky trading ventures, has slowed the global economy, rocked stock markets around the world, and tightened lending throughout the U.S. economy.
"We're not proud of all the mistakes that were made by many different people, different parties, failures of our regulatory system, failures of market discipline that got us here," said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Thursday in an interview on Fox Business Network.