Tim Fernholz profiles seven liberal financial experts who are helping transform Wall Street: The financial crisis has led to an accountability moment for our economic system. But the most disappointing -- if unsurprising -- realization in what ought to be an era of reform is that so few experts from the world of Wall Street and commerce have stepped forward to offer a transformative vision of the new economy. On the left, brilliant economists and advocates abound, but it is harder to find practitioners whose reforms are inspired by hard-won experience. Nonetheless, there is a short list of financial-sector reformers whose ideas are gaining more attention. Though they are not all self-identified liberals, their commonsense responses to our economic system seem, in contrast to the status quo, quite radical -- imagine, a consumer-credit system that reflects actual practices or executive pay that reflects performance. The reformers belong to an earlier age of boring but sustainable banking. And while some of their ideas are old-fashioned, they seem refreshingly new to the generation raised to think of investment bankers as infallible "masters of the universe" rather than mere petulant plutocrats. KEEP READING ..
