> Whenever socialist policies, in this case the central planning of credit and interest

You are conflating centralization with socialism. Mario Draghi is the centralist banker behind QE and he is a fervent neoliberal. He has nothing to do with socialism.

> This is the Soviet Union playbook to a T, except they would always blame "wreckers" or reactionaries.

Crazy how distracted I've been lately, I've lived in a communist economy without noticing. I must have missed the proletarian expropriation somehow.

Jokes aside, it's interesting how people like to call the current system socialist when it doesn't work, capitalist when it does.

> You are conflating centralization with socialism.

Centralization is what socialism /is/ minus your dreams about some lofty goals that have never been achieved.

> He has nothing to do with socialism

What you do trumps what you call yourself or what wiki calls you.

> I've lived in a communist economy without noticing.

Not full communist but there are significant socialist components in the western economies, usually the sectors that don't work, and yeah, it's not really to your credit that you somehow failed to notice that education, healthcare, military and so on aren't capitalist.

Central banking is, at least since the bailouts, full on monetary communism. It's infuriating to me that people just refuse to learn the first thing about this system.

> I must have missed the proletarian expropriation somehow.

You clearly haven't been following the news from the Netherlands.

> Jokes aside, it's interesting how people like to call the current system socialist when it doesn't work, capitalist when it does.

When socialism doesn't work, capitalism get's the blame. Actually it's even worse than that, capitalism is just a blanket label for anything bad, regardless of the underlying dynamics.

I strongly disagree that QE policies and central banking are socialist. In fact, I would argue that QE, as it has been enacted since its inception after the collapse of Japan’s credit bubble, is closer to the opposite since it strengthens capital’s control over labour. The mechanisms of which are asset price inflation, financialization, austerity which reduces spending on public goods, poor wage growth, and so on. These are all examples of capital increasing its power while labour loses power. I agree the policy choice is terrible, but I don’t see how they can be construed as socialist.

Also, keep in mind that the theoreticial justifications for these policies do not originate in socialist/marxist economics. Nor are the technocrats that implement them motivated by socialist theory.

It seems the only connection that exist is that central banking is central (so is the military) and that marxist-leninist regimes make heavy use of centralism. Central banking predates all such regimes, by the way. But that seems like a superficial connection that does nothing to elucidate. I disagree heavily with QE but labeling it socialist does not help in understanding it so that I may effectively oppose it.

Hello ChatGPT, good to have you!

Central banking is literally the fifth plank of communism.