Remember all that hysterical talk about how President Obama was taking advantage of the economic crises to nationalize various industries? Strangely enough, the government is selling them off as quickly as possible. Kenneth Silber waxes reasonable at the Frum Forum:
The Obama administration just announced its plans to sell off the government’s majority stake in the bailed-out insurance company AIG. The government also has been unwinding its positions in Citigroup and other banks, and is preparing to sell off its shares in GM as well.
The AIG rescue and the other TARP bailouts, initiated by the Bush administration with support from then-candidate Obama, were never popular in general and are anathema among Tea Party voters. But these bailouts seem to have worked out pretty well. The cost to taxpayers looks likely to be modest (it’s possible the Treasury will profit on AIG overall). A reasonable concern — that the government had no clear exit strategy from its crisis-driven role — has turned out to not be a lasting problem....
It's almost as if Obama does not actually believe in government ownership of private industry