The Pentagon recruiting effort dangles both money and access, offering Wall Street recruits the opportunity to manage “more capital than most investors deploy in their entire careers.” Salaries could reach as much $300,000 at the Pentagon, or $500,000 to $600,000 “if employed through a government-aligned nonprofit.” According to federal statistics, the average pay for a federal worker is about $100,000, and only about 3 percent make $200,000 or more.
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The Pentagon has become one of the drivers of the Trump administration’s new strategy of acquiring equity stakes in companies in certain industries. While the Commerce and Energy Departments have also snapped up ownership stakes in private companies, the Pentagon is by far the most deep-pocketed agency.
That includes the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital, which was established in 2022 under Mr. Biden and received an infusion of funding in President Trump’s tax bill last year.
Last summer, the office announced a $150 million loan to MP Materials, the owner of a rare earths mine. Since then, the Pentagon has taken equity stakes in other metals and mining firms, including Trilogy Metals, Vulcan Elements and ReElement Technologies. The investment team that the Pentagon is building would be directed at doing more deals like those.
If the article is going to call Trump ‘President Trump’, then it should be calling Biden ‘President Biden’, not ‘Mr. Biden’; fascists shouldn’t be propped up on pedestals above anyone else.
Sounds exactly like state ownership. You know, Communism.
Integration of corporations into government is by definition fascism. At least according to Mussolini,
Communism would be the nationalization of industries into the government, which transfers their ownership to the state.
The key difference is that under Fascism, corporations are still autonomous in that they can control their own policies, and also make those policies law. Under communism industrial units are told what they can do by the state, because the state decides the law.
It’s akin to an autocratic oligarchy vs monarchy comparison, except without the birth right succession. And technically a real communist nation would have a state controlled by extremely democratic systems, though in the real world the democratic portion of communist societies have all been a show for the people under the rule of a strong man autocrat.
Except the state is run by a king. So not really communism.
I liked America better when it was capitalist.
It hasn’t been truly capitalist in a very long time, if ever.
True, but I don’t like direct government intervention in terms of investing in companies and setting their direction. That’s definitely not capitalism.
