The first GMAC bailout: While the United states Armed Forces (private mercenaries) are stationed at 737 bases, in 130 nations around the world, defending “all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world,” Henry M. Paulson, Jr., secretary of the treasury, announces the purchase of 5,000,000,000 “dollars” in new issued preferred (paying guaranteed dividends, but having no voting rights) stock in the financially beleaguered General Motors Acceptance Corporation, which finances consumer purchases of GM automobiles and trucks.  GMAC, which ventured into underwriting mortgages years earlier, got into trouble when the housing bubble burst.

       NOTE: This is the further realization of plank number five of the “Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx.

       [added 8/28/2021] Thanks to Freedom’s Phoenix for this entry.