...is that Petraeus recently came out in favor of negotiating with the Taliban.

Now that, in and of itself, would actually be a good thing. When I read about it, I thought we were having a brief moment of clarity in the national discourse and among the top brass.

But now I read that Petraeus is for invading Syria??

So he wants to make peace with fundamentalist guerrillas, and instead start another unprovoked war with a legitimate (or as legitimate as it gets in that neck of the woods), sovereign government?

Sounds like a great recipe for true global conflagration.

I'm sorry, but Salon's "economics" columnist, who openly admits he knows nothing about economics, is quite un-readable anymore. I came back to Salon after not reading for a while to see what was being said about the financial mess, and so naturally gravitated towards Mr. Leonard's column. Unfortunately, he has had nothing but backwards, unintelligible commentary throughout.

Also, it is only right to point out--as New Deal Democrat has--that it was consumers who willingly "spent" money they didn't have to help get "us" into this mess.

Now it is the same consumers who are bitching about the nationalization of the financial services sector--myself included--yet who will undoubtedly be gobbling up more artificial credit and Federal Reserve monopoly money as soon as it is printed up, used by the banks (to light their $50 cigars, most likely), and trickles down to Joe Asscrack or whatever media creation is standing in for the average taxpayer these days.

And so the drive towards overt totalitarianism marches inexorably on.

If anything like a "free market" were operating in America in the last seventy years, there would never have been any talk whatsoever of a publicly-financed bailout of private business interests. These men (Paulson and his buddies, not to mention the insurance and, for that matter, auto industries) have enjoyed state protection for quite some time.

Second, there actually is a school of economics that predicted this entire mess, down to the details, and has been talking about it for many years: the Austrian school.

Other than that, I agree that the "science" of economics is indeed a disaster in the mainstream. Look at the parade of university economists who are still given a spotlight to air their ideas, even after they've been proven utterly wrong time after not-so-hilarious time.

So I'll let Wikipedia do the talking this time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

"No doctrines of fascism were more obscure than its economic goals and systems. Fascists promoted their ideology as a "third position" between capitalism and communism. Fascism often involved corporatism but to equate fascism with corporatism is a mistake as the German National Socialists and other fascists rejected corporatism, often as being too conservative or capitalist. What fascists did have in common was the goal of a new national multiclass economics which is either labeled national corporatist, national socialist or national syndicalist. Thus, Third Position economics stipulates fascists' opposition to the elements of capitalist and communist political and economic systems. Fascism opposes the demands by capitalist systems for little government intervention, opposes capitalism's unequivocal support of free trade (i.e. fascists enacted protectionist policies), and opposes capitalism's support for free international movement of capital, and opposes capitalism's support of individualism. Fascism opposes communism for its promotion a class-based world society where nations would cease to exist. Fascists see communism as unpatriotic and a major enemy to their agenda.

Fascists opposed what they believed to be laissez-faire or quasi-laissez-faire economic policies dominant in the era prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve and the Income Tax, and the subsequent Great Depression. People of many different political stripes blamed laissez-faire capitalism for the Great Depression, and fascists promoted their ideology as a "third way" between capitalism and Marxian socialism. Their policies manifested as a radical extension of government control over the economy without wholesale expropriation of the means of production. Fascist governments nationalized some key industries, managed their currencies and made some massive state investments. They also introduced price controls, wage controls and other types of economic planning measures. Fascist governments instituted state-regulated allocation of resources, especially in the financial and raw materials sectors.

Other than nationalization of certain industries, private property was allowed, but property rights and private initiative were contingent upon service to the state. For example, "an owner of agricultural land may be compelled to raise wheat instead of sheep and employ more labor than he would find profitable."[66][66] According to historian Tibor Ivan Berend, dirigisme was an inherent aspect of fascist economies. The Labour Charter of 1927, promulgated by the Grand Council of Fascism, stated in article 7:

"The corporative State considers private initiative, in the field of production, as the most efficient and useful instrument of the Nation," then goes on to say in article 9 that: "State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient, or when are at stakes the political interest of the State. This intervention may take the form of control, encouragement or direct management."

Fascists thought that private property should be regulated to ensure that "benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual." They also introduced price controls and other types of economic planning measures."

The "bail-out" is state protectionism of industry and corporate welfare, and is really nothing new. All these companies have been receiving political favors and protection from "failure," i.e. market competition, for decades. It has nothing to do with "free markets," and everything to do with the implementation of a massive police state.

It's very simple: the Republicans introduce authoritarian social and police controls into the society, then the Democrats introduce authoritarian economic controls. They both support each other in these policies, and they don't allow any alternatives to this so-called "two-party" system.