'We're all socialists now, comrade'

London's Daily Telegraph was horrified by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's action last week to partly nationalize British banks. The action may have calmed global markets, but not the conservative Telegraph. In a piece Friday headlined "We're all socialists now, comrade," the Telegraph's Simon Heffer pondered the risks of socialism and called Brown's move "the Sovietisation of Britain." He predicted that, like all government intervention into free markets, it would inevitably lead to "sclerosis, the suppression of enterprise, the raising of taxes, starvation of investment, lack of innovation, technological retardation and the rise of the power of organized labor."

Now, as Countdown to Crawford reported earlier, George W. Bush has joined the club.

But Bush didn't sound much more comfortable with the idea than the Telegraph's Heffer. In remarks today in the Rose Garden, Bush, who likes to call himself a free-trader, went out of his way to emphasize that the unprecedented government intervention was temporary.

In fact, during his six-minute speech, the president used the word "temporary" or "short-term" five times.

He praised European leaders for a coordinated plan to provide "temporary government guarantees for bank loans." He called the injection of capital into U.S. banks by purchasing equity shares "an essential short-term measure." He promised that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation would "temporarily guarantee most new debt" and "immediately and temporarily expand government insurance." Finally, he said Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and his team would detail the moves, promising:

They will make clear that the government's role will be limited and temporary. And they will make clear that these measures are not intended to take over the free market, but to preserve it.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Eric Draper / White House