Jim Bunning, a Repuplican from Kentucky on the banking committee, has been sounding like Ron Paul lately. Bloomberg has the interview:

“I sincerely believe that Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke should resign,” said Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky on the Senate Banking Committee. “They have taken the free market out of the free market.”

“We no longer have a free market in the United States, we have a government controlled free market,” Bunning said in an interview. Paulson, a former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., “is acting like the minister of finance in China.”

Bunning, 76, criticized Paulson’s successful effort in July to obtain congressional authority to pump unlimited amounts of money into Fannie and Freddie to keep them afloat.

“When I picked up my newspaper yesterday, I thought I woke up in France. But no, it turned out it was socialism here in the United States,” he told Paulson at a July 15 Senate Banking Committee hearing.

Following Paulson’s Sept. 7 announcement of the takeover of Fannie and Freddie, Bunning said he now feels like a citizen of China.

Former Phillies Pitcher

“No company fails in communist China, because they’re all partly owned by the government,” said the former pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Bunning accused Paulson of deception when he told Congress in July that the Treasury’s plan would instill such confidence among investors that it would never have to be used.

Paulson “saw and knew what was happening, and didn’t tell the truth to the banking committee,” Bunning said yesterday.

Mr. Bunning hits the nail on the head, but the brand of socialism ascendant in the US should more properly be called fascism, as it heavily favors an oligarchy and is served with equal helpings of nationalism, militarism and surveillance.