To the Louisiana Purchase, we can add the Gadsden Purchase and Seward's Folly (Alaska Purchase). All three were considered over-priced, beyond our means, and hugely wasteful at the time they were made. The list of things government (state and federal) buy/sell sometimes deemed wasteful or inappropriate also include: cotton (to control market speculation), water/land rights/titles, patents, human-capital (slaves), political offices (e.g., New York port inspectorships), surplus crops, ordinance, ships and shipyards, bankrupt farms & farm mortgages, eminent-domain, Internet-access, oil & mineral rights, space exploration, bandwidth, secrets, and carbon-credits. And let's not forget the rampant abuse of government purchasing (influence peddling, votes, private homes & home improvements, cars, emergency issued credit-card frauds, sex, drugs & booze, travel, expensive trinkets, souvenirs, gifts, &c). Civil War abuse by both agents and contractors is still cited as the acme of corruption.

What this illustrates is not that government under Bush has been terrific, rather it illustrates it has been less odious than some and hardly more socialist than the outright confiscations of FDR and Truman. Nonetheless, I do not mean to let Bush and go-along Republicans off the hook just because they have been "less" confiscatory than the grand masters of 'principled' (aka, socialist) theft; but let's do put this in proper perspective.

What Bush is pushing is voodoo-economics in a panic spurred by political rhetoric that the economy is already in the tank. Maybe he's worried he'll go out on a sour note that will spoil his legacy, and maybe he's genuinely concerned it is a legacy he'll be ashamed of and/or concerned about the little guy he mistakenly believes is being crushed by greedy lenders. In the long politicization of the debate over whether this is or is not "8-years of the worst economic policy", rhetoric has come to dominate over common sense. Only a couple of sectors of the economy are feeling a real pinch. Elsewhere, loans and investments are still being made and consumer spending has not slowed a great deal. Pension funds and 401Ks are seeing some negative growth, but unless you are within a couple years of retirement or government does something to exacerbate a bad situation, we can count on a rebound once the market corrects. No one is starving or going without necessities. A handful of homeowners with very little equity are being forced to go back to renting; which is exactly where they would be had they not been given unsecured loans. Most of these can walk away and the few who can't, can be accomodated with far less than a $700bn industry bailout; but are, instead, exploited for political gain.

Might we mention the Louisiana Purchase excuted in 1803 by Thomas Jefferson for $23M? Completly illegal, but a pretty good deal never the less.

Oh yes, and where did the money go? To a war in France.

Good points Bob

I also meant to say something about Eland's misuse of corporatism. Corporatism is "a political or economic system in which power is held by civic assemblies that represent economic, industrial, agrarian, social, cultural, and/or professional groups. These civic assemblies are known as corporations (not the same as the legally incorporated business entities known as corporations, though may include those). " ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism ). Mussolini's fascism included elements of nationalism, corporatism, syndicalism, expansionism, social-progress anti-communism, censorship of subversives, and state-propaganda.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/09/print/20080929-2.html – details of recovery plan before Congress that has Bush approval. Upshot is Bush called on Congress to come up with a plan to avert a financial crisis he is convinced is will happen. He did not stipulate how this is to be done, leaving most of the details to Congress to work out. The so-called ‘Bush Plan’ may be bad economics and is certainly a case of government exceeding its mandate (statism), but is hardly socialism because, at the end of the day, all government is holding is a lot of paper.

Socialism consists in “state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of an egalitarian society” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism ). The Bush endorsed plan, cooked up by the Democrat run Congress, consists of the government buying up bad debt assets (paper), but does not result in government grabbing ownership or administration of private companies away from any banks or lenders.

Syndicalism might be a closer analogy to the Bush Plan, “a type of movement which aims to degrade capitalist societies (aka, capitalism) through action by the working class on the industrial front … [a] means both of overcoming capitalism and of running society in the interests of the majority” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicalism ). This too, is misleading because the Bush Plan does not subvert capitalism. Rather it provides a prop; one that ceases to operate on the body-corporate once the transfer of debt is made. Another name for syndicalism is ‘trade-unionism’, and this is hardly that, as no trade-unions are involved. Trade-unionism (syndicalism), therefore, is a collaboration of labor and government to capture industry and assume control of its operations, and to redistribute (plunder) its profits and other benefits; eliminating management and capital as (supposedly) unnecessary. FDR was a good example of a syndicalist.

Corporate-welfare are government bestowals of money grants, subsidies, tax-breaks, favored treatment of corporations or select corporations (favoritism); which bestowals are deemed excessive, unwarranted, wasteful, unfair, inefficient, or bought about through lobbying ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_welfare ). Bailouts are an instance of corporate-welfare. A bailout can be a direct grant of money, a loan, or an assumption of debt uncompensated by any transfer of assets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_bailout_of_United_States_financial_system – one version of the current bailout, causes, and likely results from a clearly liberal (Democrat) point of view.

http://www.mises.org/story/3131 – an alternate explanation of what the bailout will accomplish by a fiscal-libertarian.
http://www.mises.org/story/3128 – the Von Mises Bailout Reader

While I am forced to agree with Mr. Eland’s tagline (“Financial institutions must be allowed to fail, and the market must be allowed to return to equilibrium.”), it is not for the reasons he gives; and his reasoning is, as usual, extremely faulty. He consistently fails to check his facts, terms, and assumptions for internal consistency. His misapplication of historical events to current situations and motivations is appalling in its breadth. For example, saying Bush asking Congress to bailout lenders is tantamount and superior to the seizing of assets by FDR and Truman is pure hogwash. The Bush Plan (to be administered by the next administration, offers to buy up assets; not seize them. The only seizure involved here is the additional taxes required to bailout the lenders (which Bush suggests will be paid back on the next guy’s watch), and no one so far is suggesting government lacks the authority to tax. Government making purchases and loans is, in fact, as old as the republic.

I guess I was thrown off by the weak attempt at portraying Democrats as to the right. The only possible thing to the right in this scenario would be the Democrats rejecting the bailout, but the only thing they are angry about is that Bush might steal their thunder (which won't matter because should it have failed, they would have blamed him regardless). He gave plenty of examples of Bush by comparing him to previous US Presidents and some of their actions, but with the Democrats, he only threw the name of Mussolini and saying he was for corporatism.

I was rather upset with this article not because of its material, per se, but rather the way it was presented. It was clearly a rant on Republicans and Bush (which is nothing new for this author), a weak attempt to act Independent by giving credit to and taking it back from the Democrats, and finally giving his proposed solution. I agree that the bailout could be disastrous, but was the poorly constructed rant necessary?

At first I did not think Mr Eland said Dems on the right, but going back I see he did say "Democrats are advocating the corporatism of Italian rightist dictator Benito Mussolini" Maybe my confusion and yours comes from the misplaced conception that Mussolini and Stalin represent opposites. They don't really. They both represent totalitarianism and the opposite is liberty and freedom.
Other than that point I think your comments are well taken.

Regardless, it was a poorly written potshot at everyone. Republicans on the left? Granted, Bush deserves blame for even thinking a massive bailout was necessary, and it reeks of socialism. But Bush is one Republican, and the House Republicans essentially stopped this beast from happening. So going all crazy on a rant about Republicans being a leftist party is rather inane. They can act it sometimes, but this just seems like a petty rant by someone with a vendetta.

As for Democrats on the right, I'd like to touch that one, but I really cannot understand it well. How can a party that hates anything that makes a profit (or rather succeeds) be right-wing?

Also, one statement that I found rather interesting was this one: "As noted above, his socialism may be worse than that of Woodrow Wilson and FDR because it has nothing to do with the wars he's fighting." If you mean the "bailing out of businesses" then perhaps, but if you are just referring to socialism, WWII broke out in 1939 and the US did not get involved until 1941. FDR was elected in 1933 and he was already pushing his New Deal, effectively extending the Great Depression throughout most of his presidency.