Massive Inequality, We Have Learned, Isn't The

Money Never Seems To Be Interested In Strengthening Regulatory Agencies, For Example, But Always In Subverting Them, In Making Them Miss The Danger Signs In Coal Mines And In Derivatives Trading And In Deep-sea Oil Wells.

Markets Are Interested In Profits And Profits Only; Service, Quality, And General Affluence Are Different Functions Altogether. The Universal, Democratic Prosperity That Americans Now Look Back To With Such Nostalgia Was Achieved Only By A Colossal Reigning In Of Markets, By The Gargantuan Effort Of Mass, Popular Organizations Like Labor Unions And Of The People Themselves, Working Through A Series Of Democratically Elected Governments Not Daunted By The Myths Of The Market.

[the Right] May Never Bring Prayer Back To Schools, But It Has Rescued All Manner Of Rightwing Economic Nostrums From History's Dustbins. Having Rolled Back The Landmark Economic Reforms Of The Sixties (the War On Poverty) And Those Of The Thirties (labor Law, Agricultural Price Supports, Banking Regulation), Its Leaders Now Turn Their Guns On The Accomplishments Of The Earliest Years Of Progressivism (woodrow Wilson's Estate Tax; Theodore Roosevelt's Anti-trust Measures). With A Little More Effort, The Backlash May Well Repeal The Entire Twentieth Century.

In The Subprime Mortgage Industry, Bankers Handed Out Iffy Loans Like Candy At A Parade Because Such Loans Meant Revenue And, Hence, Bonuses For Executives In The Here-and-now.

The Great Fear That Hung Over The Business Community In The 1970s Was Death By Regulation, And The Great Goal Of The Conservative Movement, As It Rose To Triumph In The 1980s, Was To Remove That Threat - To Keep Osha, The Epa, And The Ftc From Choking Off Entrepreneurship With Their Infernal Meddling In The Marketplace.