And it's right here in this post by economist Simon Johnson, who sounds the warning about the financial oligarchy--his term--that has come to dominate American politics. Read this if you want to be truly sobered about how drastic our situation really is, and how strong the medicine we might have to take could turn out to be.
And this will definitely get your attention:
The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump “cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.” This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression—because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances. If our leadership wakes up to the potential consequences, we may yet see dramatic action on the banking system and a breaking of the old elite. Let us hope it is not then too late.
1 comment:
Thanks for posting, Joe! Not that I think many of your friends and readers take much stock in the media's interpretation of the financial crisis, but if you read this article, notice how different it sounds from the suggestions that all politicians (both parties) and "financial analysts" are giving. Paul Krugman (Nobel winner, NYT columnist) is moving firmly into this camp as well, and he's being quite hostile to the current administration despite his Statist/Keynesian bent. The financiers have invested a lot in ratcheting control on the gov't in the past 50 years. They have a lot more tricks in their bag, you can be sure.
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