Noam Chomsky

"In the post-Vietnam War era the need for Communist abuses has been no less pressing than before. More facts have come to light on the scope of U.S. violence in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, the extent of which U.S. officials lied to the public with regard to their programs and methods, and the brazenness with which these officials defied treaty obligations and international law. Much as the government and the media tried to isolate the scoundrelism of Watergate from the much more profound immorality of the “secret” devastation of Cambodia, the linkage between the two could not be entirely concealed and therefore tended to discredit still further the campaign to bring “freedom” to South Vietnam. Counterrevolution, torture and official murder in Argentina, Guatemala, Chile, and other U.S. satellites was also reaching new peaks. Thus, if Cambodian terror did not exist, the Western propaganda systems would have had to invent it, and in certain respects it did […]."

"Among the many symbols used to frighten and manipulate the populace of the democratic states, few have been more important than “terror” and “terrorism.” These terms have generally been confined to the use of violence by individuals and marginal groups. Official violence, which is far more extensive both in scale and destructiveness, is placed in a different category altogether. The usage has nothing to do with justice, causal sequence, or numbers abused. Whatever the actual sequence of cause and effect, official violence is described as responsive or provoked (“retaliation,” “protective reaction,” etc.), not the active and initiating source of abuse. Similarly, the massive long-term violence inherent in the oppressive social structures that U.S. power has supported is typically disregarded. The numbers tormented and killed by official violence – wholesale as opposed to retail terror – during recent decades have exceeded those of unofficial terrorists by a factor running into the thousands. But this is not “terror,” although one terminological exception may be noted: while Argentinian “security forces” only retaliate and engage in “police action,” violence carried out by unfriendly states (Cuba, Cambodia) may be designated “terroristic.” The status of proper usage is settled not merely by the official or unofficial status of the perpetrators but also by their political affiliations."

"And it’s gone on for the United States. We have measures of it. I’m sure you know that the Rand Corporation about a year ago came out with an estimate that about $50 trillion – That’s not pennies – $50 trillion had been transferred to the pockets of the top 1%, or to a fraction of them, mostly in the last 40 years of class war. Meanwhile, real wages have stagnated, and for mail workers, benefits have collapsed."

"The scale of the plague is surprising, indeed shocking, but not its appearance. Nor the fact that the U.S. has the worst record in responding to the crisis. Scientists have been warning of a pandemic for years. [...] But scientific understanding is not enough. There has to be someone to pick up the ball and run with it. That option was barred by the pathology of the contemporary order. Market signals were clear: There’s no profit in preventing a future catastrophe. The government could have stepped in, but that’s barred by reigning doctrine: "Government is the problem," Reagan told us with his sunny smile, meaning that decision-making has to be handed over even more fully to the business world, which is devoted to private profit and is free from influence by those who might be concerned with the common good. The years that followed injected a dose of neoliberal brutality to the unconstrained capitalist order and the twisted form of markets it constructs."

"In the West, I think a large part of what’s happening, a very large part, is the bitter, savage, class war that’s been conducted for the last 40 years. It’s called neoliberalism. It even has rhetoric about markets and so on. But that’s widely misleading. It’s basically savage class war. And it was understood by the leaders. It starts with Reagan and Thatcher. Their first moves in office were to attack, undermine the labor movement, opening the door for the corporate sector to enter with illegal strike-breaking efforts, organization efforts tolerated by the criminal state. That made sense. If you’re going to carry out a bitter, savage class war, better eliminate all the means of defense."

"It is tempting to cast the blame on Trump for the disastrous response to the crisis. But if we hope to avert future catastrophes, we must look beyond him. Trump came to office in a sick society, afflicted by 40 years of neoliberalism, with still deeper roots. [...] The neoliberal version of capitalism has been in force since Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, beginning shortly before. There should be no need to detail its grim consequences. Reagan's generosity to the super-rich is of direct relevance today as another bailout is in progress. Reagan quickly lifted the ban on s and other devices to shift the tax burden to the public, and also authorized stock buybacks — a device to inflate s and enrich corporate management and the very wealthy (who own most of the stock) while undermining the of the enterprise."

"The U.S.'s privatized for-profit health care system had long been an international scandal, with twice the per capita expenses of other developed societies and some of the worst outcomes. Neoliberal doctrine struck another blow, introducing business measures of efficiency: just-on-time service with no fat in the system. Any disruption and the system collapses. This is the world that Trump inherited, the target of his battering ram. [...] It seems that many Americans would prefer to spend more money as long as it doesn't go to taxes (incidentally killing tens of thousands of people annually). That’s a telling indication of the state of American democracy, as people experience it; and from another perspective, of the force of the doctrinal system crafted by business power and its intellectual servants. The neoliberal assault has intensified this pathological element of the national culture, but the roots go much deeper and are illustrated in many ways, a topic very much worth pursuing."

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

"I use Google all the time, I’m happy it’s there. But just as when I read The New York Times or the Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal knowing that they have ways of selecting and shaping the material that reaches you, you have to compensate for it. With Google, and others of course, there is an immense amount of surveillance to try to obtain personal data about individuals and their habits and interactions and so on, to shape the way information is presented to them. They do more [surveillance] than the NSA."

"The worst case is the increasing provocative actions towards China... there is constant talk about what is called the China threat. You can read it in sober, reasonable, usually reasonable journals, about the terrible China threat, and that we have to move expeditiously to contain and limit the China threat.... What exactly is the China threat? Actually that question is rarely raised here.... the distinguished statesman, former [Australian] Prime Minister Paul Keating, did have an essay in the Australian press about the China threat. He finally concluded realistically that the China threat is China’s existence. The U.S. will not tolerate the existence of a state that cannot be intimidated the way Europe can be, that does not follow U.S. orders the way Europe does but pursues its own course. That is the threat. When we talk about the threat of China, we’re talking about the alleged threats at China’s borders. China does plenty of wrong things, terrible things. You can make many criticisms. But are they a threat?... they are not a threat."

"Covid-19 has revealed glaring failures and monstrous brutalities in the current capitalist system. It represents both a crisis and an opportunity. Contests for controlling the narratives around the meaning of this pandemic will be the terrain of struggle for either a new, more humane common sense and society or a return to the status quo ante. The outcome of those contests is uncertain; everything depends on the actions that people take into their hands."

"Though the situation has somewhat improved in recent years, our education system does not even come close to adequately reflecting the impact of these movements of ordinary people on our history. One major contribution was Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States and the companion Voices volume, which lifted the veil from central parts of history that had been concealed or sidelined in the standard patriotic versions. But there is a long way to go. In particular, labor history is virtually effaced in the press and the educational system, as well as in the media. Not long ago fine journalists covering the labor movement. Today, almost none. Every newspaper has a business section; none could even imagine a labor section, addressing the interests and concerns of a large majority of the population. Social movements receive cursory attention, usually highly misleading."

"The one-sided class war of the last 40 years is becoming two-sided. The population is actually beginning to participate instead of just accepting the hammer blows. We now are having a huge strike. One of the major strikes in American history, when workers are simply saying, we’re not gonna go back to the rotten, oppressive jobs, precarious, broadens circumstances is novel, we’re just not gonna accept it. And that’s a major factor in the economy now. And yes, it’s a strike and it’s showing up in other ways too, there are, for example, the teacher’s strikes were quite important. These are non-unionized red states, tremendous popular support. When you live in Arizona, where one of them was signs on every lawn, supporting the teachers, not a radical state by any means. They were not just calling for better wages, which they greatly deserve, but for saving the children, saving the public school, public education, which has been under severe attack for 45 years."

"Biden has pretty much picked up Trump’s foreign policy. He has eliminated some of the more gratuitously savage elements. Like in the case of Palestine, for example, Trump was not satisfied with just giving everything away to Israeli right-wing power—”do what you want”—and offering nothing to the Palestinians, just kicking them in the face. He even had to go beyond that to truly gratuitous savagery like cutting off the lifeline, the UNRWA lifeline, for Palestinians to be able to have at least minimal bare survival in the Israeli punching bag in Gaza. Even that, well, Biden removed those things. Other than that, pretty much followed the same policies."

"At one point you talked about the change from language acquisition to language development. And I think that's a very significant idea. Language isn't really learned; it just grows in the mind. It's something that develops naturally, automatically [...]. It's almost like learning to walk. You don't learn to walk, it just comes automatically. At a certain point a child stands up, starts moving, figures it, gets to understand how to distribute your weight. Nobody's taught you this, but, a lot of calculation and computation goes into simply walking down the street. You don't know the rules, you couldn't know the rules, maybe some biologist could figure out what they are. But that's not the way you pick up walking."

"Right at the same time as Keating’s article, Australia’s leading military correspondent Brian Toohey, highly knowledgeable, did an assessment of the relative military power of China, in their own region of China and the United States and its allies Japan and Australia. It’s laughable. One U.S. Trident submarine, now being replaced by even more lethal ones — one U.S. submarine can destroy almost 200 cities anywhere in the world with its nuclear weapons. China in the South China Sea has four old noisy submarines which can’t even get out because they’re contained by superior U.S. and Allied Force... In the face of this, the United States is sending a fleet of nuclear submarines to Australia. That’s the AUKUS deal—the Australia, U.K., United States—which have no strategic purpose whatsoever. They will not even be in operation for 15 years, but they do incite China almost certainly to build up its lagging military forces, increasing the level of confrontation. There are problems in the South China Sea that can be met with diplomacy and negotiations, the regional powers taking the lead, could go into the details. But the right measure is not increasing provocation, increasing the threat of an accidental development which could lead to devastating, even Earthly-terminal nuclear war. But that is the direction the Biden administration is following, expansion of the Trump programs. That is the core of their foreign policy programs."

"The current administration had ample warning about a likely pandemic. In fact, a high-level simulation was run as recently as last October. Trump has reacted during his years in office in the manner to which we have become accustomed: by defunding and dismantling every relevant part of government and assiduously implementing the instructions of his corporate masters to eliminate the regulations that impede profits while saving lives — and leading the race to the abyss of , by far his greatest crime — in fact, the greatest crime in history when we consider the consequences."

"If we're leaving our fate to sociopathic buffoons, we're finished... Trump is the worst, that's because of US power which is overwhelming. We are talking about U.S. decline but you just look at the world, you don't see that when the U.S. imposes sanctions, murderous, devastating sanctions, that's the only country that can do that, but everyone has to follow. Europe may not like, in fact hate actions on Iran, but they have to follow, they have to follow the master, or else they get kicked out of the international financial system. That's not a law of nature, it's a decision in Europe to be subordinate to the master in Washington. Other countries don't even have a choice...."

"[…] when Vaclav Havel comes [to the US Congress] and says “you’re the Defenders of Freedom” and of course gets enormous applause for it across the political spectrum, how are we supposed to react to that? This isn’t to imply that Havel wasn’t treated badly – of course he was – but he didn’t have his brains blown out. So yes, I expected exactly that reaction in Eastern Europe because they simply do not know. What they do “know” is that they were the only ones who suffered."

"And back to the coronavirus, one of the most shocking harsh aspects of it, is the use of sanctions, to maximize the pain, perfectly consciously, Iran is in a zone, enormous internal problems by the stranglehold of tightening sanctions, which are consciously designed to make them suffer and suffer bitterly."

"I have a parrot. It can say 'sovereignty to all the people' in Portuguese."

"There will be recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, at severe and possibly horrendous cost, particularly for the poor and more vulnerable. But there will be no recovery from the melting of the polar ice sheets and the other devastating consequences of global warming. Here, too, the catastrophe results from a market failure — in this case, of truly earth-shaking proportions."

"If you look at the birth rate in the U.S. right now, the majority are non-white, you don't have to know the statistics to know what that means. They will lose the white supremacy. The concept of being white is not a race concept, but rather sociological. If you go back, not very far, Jews were not considered white. Neither were the Irish. In late-19th century Boston, you could find signs at restaurants saying “No dogs or Irish.” They gradually became white as they assimilated into the culture, especially when they gained wealth and political power. And that's now happening with the Hispanic population."

"There is hope for the Palestinians, but it doesn't lie with Biden, it lies with the public opinion in the U.S., which can't be suppressed forever. If you go back 20 years, the support for Israel would be among liberal democrats. Now it's shifting to evangelicals and ultranationalists. And support for Palestinians is growing among liberals – especially the young ones. Sooner or later that might influence policy."

"In these tumultuous times, Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion is important, because a functioning democracy requires active citizen participation in setting social policy."

"For now, the critical task is to organize activist popular movements to change popular consciousness and understanding, to shape legislation, and to create facts on the ground: worker-owned industries, cooperatives, and other structures of democratic participation. We can learn a great deal from the long and hard struggles for social justice in past years, and we can and must move forward to build on their achievements and to surpass them. Given the urgency of the crises we face, there is no time to lose."

"“Critical race theory” is the scare-phrase used for the study of the systematic structural and cultural factors in the hideous 400-year history of slavery and enduring racist repression. Proper indoctrination in schools and universities must ban this heresy. What actually happened for 400 years and is very much alive today must be presented to students as a deviation from the real America, pure and innocent, much as in well-run totalitarian states."

"We’ve been living through about 45 years of a particular socio-economic political system, what’s called neoliberalism... The so-called free trade agreements or radically protectionist that we’re seeing that right now in front of our eyes, we see virtual monopoly on drugs. What we’ve really had for the 45 years is what so many economists have called a bail out economy. So it’s one side of class war, markets for the poor, protection for the rich."

"We should recognize that white male supremacy is a deep current in American history. It’s not gonna go away immediately. But there have been dents, significant ones. So for example, even in the mainstream, when the New York Times ran the 1619 Project, it couldn’t have happened a couple of years earlier. And it’s because of changes in general consciousness and awareness. Of course, there was an immediate backlash, strong backlash, and you’re gonna expect that, white male supremacy is a deep part of American history and culture. To extirpate it is not gonna be easy. And, but there are, there’s very significant progress. Plenty of conflict coming. It’s not gonna be an easy struggle."

"The main part of politics is activism and mobilization. ...The fact that mobilization and activism, or the core of politics, there’s very dramatic examples of that, but... The Sunrise Movement is one of the, at the forefront of activism on climate. They got the point of civil disobedience, occupying congressional offices, occupying Nancy Pelosi’s office, demanding change or narrowly, they’d just be thrown out by the Capitol police. They weren’t this time because one person from Congress came and joined them. AOC came to join them. They weren’t thrown out, moved on, that’s what led to Biden’s climate program. Not great, but better than anything before. Popular activism interacting with supportive people in Congress tend to lead to results. And this is an old lesson, we should learn. It takes a new deal, which greatly improved of the floors, greatly improved American society. How did it come about? Hand-built by a combination of militant labor action, CIO organizing, sit down strikes and a sympathetic administration. That combination is crucial."

"Trump was not silent, however. He issued a stream of confident pronouncements informing the public that it was just a cough; he has everything under control; he gets a 10 out of 10 for his handling of the crisis; it's very serious but he knew it was a pandemic before anyone else; and the rest of the sorry performance. The technique is well-designed, much like the practice of reeling out lies so fast that the very concept of truth vanishes. Whatever happens, Trump is sure to be vindicated among his loyal followers. When you shoot arrows at random, some are likely to hit the target."

"The United States government must cease interfering in Venezuela's internal politics, especially for the purpose of overthrowing the country's government. Actions by the Trump administration and its allies in the hemisphere are almost certain to make the situation in Venezuela worse, leading to unnecessary human suffering, violence, and instability."

"Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that's almost a joke. First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies - what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015."

"We’re facing an imminent threat, not far removed, of enormous damage. The effects are already visible but nothing like what’s going to come. A sea level rise of a couple of feet will be massively destructive. It will make today’s immigration issues look like trivialities. And it’s not that the administration is unaware of this. So, Donald Trump, for example, is perfectly aware of the dangerous effects, in the short term, of global warming. So, for example, recently he applied to the government of Ireland for permission to build a wall to protect his golf course in Ireland from rising sea levels. And Rex Tillerson, who was supposed to be the adult in the room before he was thrown out, as CEO of ExxonMobil, was devoting enormous resources to climate change denial, although he had, sitting on his desk, the reports of ExxonMobil scientists, who, since the '70s, in fact, were on the forefront of warning of the dire effects of this accelerating phenomenon. I don't know what word in the language—I can’t find one—that applies to people of that kind, who are willing to sacrifice the literal—the existence of organized human life, not in the distant future, so they can put a few more dollars in highly overstuffed pockets. The word “evil” doesn’t begin to approach it."

"The crucial question...what is NATO for? ...From the beginning.. we had drilled into our heads that the purpose of NATO was to defend us from the Russian hordes... OK, 1991, no more Russian hordes. There were negotiations, between George Bush, the first; James Baker, secretary of state; Mikhail Gorbachev; Genscher and Kohl, the Germans, on how to deal... after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev... agreed to allow Germany, now unified, to join NATO... There was a quid pro quo, namely that... NATO means basically U.S. forces—not expand to East Berlin, to East Germany... the phrase that was used was “not one inch to the east.” NATO immediately moved to East Germany. Under Clinton, other countries, former Russian satellites, were introduced into NATO. Finally, NATO went so far, as I mentioned before... to suggest that even Ukraine, right at the heartland of Russian strategic concerns...join NATO. So, what's NATO doing altogether? Well, actually, its mission was changed. The official mission of NATO was changed to become to be—to control and safeguard the global energy system, sea lanes, pipelines and so on. And, of course, on the side, it's acting as a intervention force for the United States. Is that a legitimate reason for us to maintain NATO, to be an instrument for U.S. global domination? I think that's a rather serious question. That's not the question that's asked."

"Venezuela's political polarization is not new; the country has long been divided along racial and socioeconomic lines. But the polarization has deepened in recent years. This is partly due to US support for an opposition strategy aimed at removing the government of Nicolás Maduro through extra-electoral means. While the opposition has been divided on this strategy, US support has backed hardline opposition sectors in their goal of ousting the Maduro government through often violent protests, a military coup d'etat, or other avenues that sidestep the ballot box."

"...the Green New Deal is exactly the right idea. You can raise questions about the specific form in which Ocasio-Cortez and Markey introduced it: Maybe it shouldn't be exactly this way; it should be a little bit differently. But the general idea is quite right. And there's very solid work explaining, developing in detail, exactly how it could work. So, a very fine economist at UMass Amherst, Robert Pollin, has written extensively on, in extensive detail, with close analysis of how you could implement policies of this kind in a very effective way, which would actually make a better society. It wouldn't be that you'd lose from it; you'd gain from it. The costs of renewable energy are declining very sharply. If you eliminate the massive subsidies that are given to fossil fuels, they probably already surpass them. There are many means that can be implemented and carried out to overcome, certainly to mitigate, maybe to overcome, this serious crisis... A lot of the media commentary ridiculing this and that aspect of it are essentially beside the point... the basic idea is correct."

"The Democrats... gave Trump a huge gift. In fact, they may have handed him the next election. That's just a—that's a matter of being so unwilling to deal with fundamental issues, that they're looking for something on the side that will somehow give political success. The real issues are different things. They're things like climate change, like global warming, like the Nuclear Posture Review, deregulation. These are real issues. But the Democrats aren't going after those. They're looking for something else—the Democratic establishment. I'm not talking about the young cohort that's coming in, which is quite different. Just all of that has to be shifted significantly, if there's going to be a legitimate political opposition to the right-wing drift that's taking place. And it can happen, can definitely happen, but it's going to take work."

"[...] after about 1960 there’s simply no serious question that the fate of Latin American dissidents was incomparably worse than that of those in the Eastern Bloc. Firstly, their treatment was far worse, but there’s another aspect: the Eastern Bloc dissidents – who were treated very harshly, and punished harshly – had the unique advantage of being celebrated and supported elsewhere; in fact, in the most powerful parts of the world. That’s not true of dissidents elsewhere; nobody supports the Latin American dissidents."

"Latin American intellectuals sympathized with and supported Eastern Bloc dissidents, but Eastern Bloc dissidents mostly didn’t give a damn about their counterparts in US domain..."

"The Coronavirus is serious enough but it's worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching, we are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that's ever happened in human history.... Donald Trump & his minions are in the lead, in racing to the abyss. In fact there are two immense threats that we are facing. One is the growing threat of nuclear war, which has exacerbated it by the tearing what's left of the arms control regime and the other of course is the growing threat of global warming. Both threats can be dealt with but there isn't a lot of time... the corona virus is a horrible... can have terrifying consequences but there will be recovery, while the others won't be recovered, it's finished. If we don't deal with them we're done."

"[Third great threat] ...the deterioration of democracy.. the one hope we have for overcoming the crisis... informed, involved public taking control of their fate. If that doesn't happen we're doomed."

"Now Cuba has been suffering from it from the moment where it gained independence, but it's astonishing that they survived but they stayed resilient and one of the most ironic elements of today's virus crisis, is that Cuba is helping Europe. I mean this is so shocking, that you don't know how to describe it. That Germany can't help Greece, but Cuba can help the European countries. If you stop to think about what that means, all words fail, just as when you see thousands of people dying in the Mediterranean, fleeing from a region that has been devastated... and being sent to the deaths in the Mediterranean, you don't know what words to use."

"The Crisis, the civilizational crisis of the West at this point is devastating... it does bring up childhood memories of listening to Hitler raving on the radio to raucous crowds... it makes you wonder if this species is even viable."

"The scale of the plague is surprising, indeed shocking, but not its appearance. Nor the fact that the U.S. has the worst record in responding to the crisis. Scientists have been warning of a pandemic for years, insistently so since the SARS epidemic of 2003, also caused by a , for which vaccines were developed but did not proceed beyond the pre-clinical level. That was the time to begin to put in place rapid-response systems in preparation for an outbreak and to set aside spare capacity that would be needed. Initiatives could also have been undertaken to develop defenses and modes of treatment for a likely recurrence with a related virus. But scientific understanding is not enough. There has to be someone to pick up the ball and run with it. That option was barred by the pathology of the contemporary order. Market signals were clear: There's no profit in preventing a future catastrophe."

"The government could have stepped in, but that's barred by reigning doctrine: "Government is the problem," Reagan told us with his sunny smile, meaning that decision-making has to be handed over even more fully to the business world, which is devoted to private profit and is free from influence by those who might be concerned with the common good. The years that followed injected a dose of neoliberal brutality to the unconstrained capitalist order and the twisted form of markets it constructs. The depth of the pathology is revealed clearly by one of the most dramatic — and murderous — failures: the lack of ventilators that is one the major bottlenecks in confronting the pandemic."

"The neoliberal version of capitalism has been in force since Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, beginning shortly before. There should be no need to detail its grim consequences. Reagan's generosity to the super-rich is of direct relevance today as another bailout is in progress. Reagan quickly lifted the ban on s and other devices to shift the tax burden to the public, and also authorized stock buybacks — a device to inflate s and enrich corporate management and the very wealthy (who own most of the stock) while undermining the of the enterprise."

"The U.S.'s privatized for-profit health care system had long been an international scandal, with twice the per capita expenses of other developed societies and some of the worst outcomes. Neoliberal doctrine struck another blow, introducing business measures of efficiency: just-on-time service with no fat in the system. Any disruption and the system collapses. Much the same is true of the fragile global economic order forged on neoliberal principles. This is the world that Trump inherited, the target of his battering ram. [...] It seems that many Americans would prefer to spend more money as long as it doesn't go to taxes (incidentally killing tens of thousands of people annually). That's a telling indication of the state of American democracy, as people experience it; and from another perspective, of the force of the doctrinal system crafted by business power and its intellectual servants. The neoliberal assault has intensified this pathological element of the national culture, but the roots go much deeper and are illustrated in many ways, a topic very much worth pursuing."

"Let's assume Biden goes back to Obama’s policies. Contrary to what many Israelis think, Obama was the most pro-Israel president prior to Trump. He never imposed any demands on Israel. Israel's settlement freeze in 2010 under Obama was a complete farce. And everyone knows it. The Israeli press reported correctly that it had no effect. Instead of building new settlements, they called it expansion."

"Each time, the taxpayer is called on to bail out those who created the crisis, increasingly the major financial institutions. In a capitalist economy, you wouldn't do that. In a capitalist system, that would wipe out the investors who made risky investments. But the rich and powerful, they don't want a capitalist system. They want to be able to run to the “nanny state” as soon as they're in trouble, and get bailed out by the taxpayer. They're given a government insurance policy, which means that no matter how often you risk everything, if you get in trouble, the public will bail you out because you're too big to fail — and it's just repeating over and over again."