Yesterday NPR's Terry Gross interviewed Steve Fraser for the bulk of her show. I didn't see it mentioned so I thought I would. Fraser’s a historian working on a book comparing the 2 gilded ages of our country. Steve Fraser had some interesting things to say about the Republicans who voted against the bailout using public sentiment against Wall Street as a cover to push their own desire to cut cap gains. How ironic.
There's a great discussion of how wall st was originally seen as a place for gamblers. The senile candidate from Arizona would've felt right at home but he wouldn't have had half the base he has now b/c they hated it. Really good discussion of Christians vs. Wall St. Parasitical and moral hubris=divination.
You can listen to it here if I get this link right.
But he thinks the Repugs are gonna get themselves caught in a dead end. He thinks the crumbling infrastructure is a travesty and we’re going to see a real push to invest in real things, that public pressure is going to push for more public authority and compel capital to flow into more productive uses of our capital resources: "everything about our infrastructure on which our basic economy rests has been allowed to basically waste away." He gives some very concrete examples of what can be done.
"Lets say that you want to compel banks to invest their resources productively, ... change the asset reserve requirement that a bank had to meet in order to be licensed by and receive insurance coverage by the Federal Government .... Lets say 5% of your asset base ... has to be invested in green energy. That would provide an enormous incentive for those who are mobilizing these capital resources to move them in that direction.
"Or a disincentive would be a tax on paper transactions like stocks which would provide an incentive to look for other ways to invest that capital.
He talks about Glass Steigel, default swaps. Huge and swift changes to policy during a massive crisis and a new administration, regulating agencies, the stagflation of the 70s that prompted deregulation and the paradox of laissez faire capitalists rushing to socialize the risk and privatize the reward during the savings and loan fiasco