Isn't that just socialism without the social benefits?

There’s a word for such a political system, it starts with an ‘f.’ Expressing opposition to it in the context of current events gets you prosecutorial enhancements.

Been like this since the GFC: the rich have a government funded undo button they can press whoever they need to.

It's been the status quo for a while now - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/trillions-of-dollars-in...

The term "fascism" has undergone so much memetic drift that it verges on useless, but this does bear a striking resemblance to fascist corporatism [1], at least taken to the logical conclusion:

"A fascist corporation can be defined as a government-directed confederation of employers and employees unions, with the aim of overseeing production in a comprehensive manner. Theoretically, each corporation within this structure assumes the responsibility of advocating for the interests of its respective profession, particularly through the negotiation of labor agreements and similar measures."

A lot of dystopian literature has been written with the premise that governments would wither away and end up replaced by mega-corporations that become the de facto law. I suppose the theory where the government just buys all the corporations instead because they control the money supply was generally overlooked by those authors. The end result probably isn't much different, but the path to get there has some differences, I suppose. It also seems reasonable to say that the authors, not being from the finance world (at least that I know of) may not have realized the depths to which financial engineering would sink and the willingness of the governments to participate in it.

Back in the 1980s when cyberpunk was really thriving the government at least made mouth noises about fighting the worst excesses of financial engineering. Whether history bears that out as something they were actually doing, the reader is welcome to come to their own conclusions about. But the government at least tried to look like a countervailing force to financial engineering.

Pretty much.

For all the current US administration has complained about the opposition being “socialist,” they’ve certainly gone all-in on the state partially owning private companies.

Almost like cries of “socialism” have become a dog whistle instead of what the term actually means.

Closer to fascism, socialism implies the workers own the means of production to an extent

Norway is far ahead in this, they collect lots of tax from poor and avg. people yet they have the biggest wealth fund in the world. literally only benefits certain groups