( – promoted by buhdydharma )
(h/t ChrisCook)
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As a commentator ARGeezer said at the EuroTrib:
No one saw it coming? More like no Serious PeopleTM listened to those who did see it coming. Our society currently is not organized in such a way as to allow any significant prior constraint on the machinations of the big money boys, and they own enough of the system to veto any attempt to change this fact. Hell, we can’t even get enforcement of existing laws that should constrain them.
In terms of the “football team” filter of American governance, the “Democratic Team” has a majority and the “Republican Team” a minority … but in terms of power politics, its a Corporate Majority, who have had to swing their focus in terms of what lies to tell to which party base in order to get what they want.
It is, IOW, like a swing in the balance of power between the Whig Lords and the Tory Lords in pre-Reform England. There are, indeed, policy differences between the Oil Patch Republicans and the Hedge Fund Democrats, but they have far more in common in terms of their basic support for the status quo.
UPDATE: Senator Dorgan 1999:
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… as discussed in ChrisCook’s diary (link above), mainstream economics is blind to “shocks” from the FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) sector, because of the assumption of an automatic tendency to full employment, the impact of the “pay a ransom to be allowed to produce” sector is assumed away.
But as the list shows, not everyone in the past decade was blinded by the trained incapacity of mainstream economics.
…know how to keep your eyes focused on what they want you to see.
Yet for many of them, it wasn’t in their best interests to admit it – either then or now.