[The following entry was first posted on the Huffington Post on April 15, 2008.]

Socialism, we are told, is the naiveté of youth, and a fallacious economics the United States has luckily spurned. The late Seymour Lipset, an well-known academician, penned a book in 2001 entitled It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States.

Alas, nobody ever told the leaders of American finance. Whereas the old style of socialism elected no more than a handful of mayors and congressmen, Washington has now embraced a new variety that could not be more different in its class consciousness and privileged sponsorship.