Robert Kuttner examines what we have -- and haven't -- learned from the Great Depression:
But the other lesson was the one "we" forgot -- not to let banks and other financial institutions turn themselves into casinos. It is helpful, in the spirit of Tonto's historic interrogatory to the Lone Ranger -- "What you mean, we?" -- to unpack that "we." The "we" who forgot the lessons included first and foremost Republican ideology -- deregulate everything and let markets run wild; secondly Bush administration regulatory officials who disdained even the regulations on the books; and third, the Wall Street Democrats who were de-regulation's willing enablers.
And Paul Waldman writes that the current confusion in the Republican party about what to do about the bailout is a sign of future divisions in the party:
Not that anyone much cares what the Republican Study Committee thinks. But its desperate attempt to head off government intervention into the smoothly humming operation of the free market, comical though it might be, tells us something about what our politics will look like after this election. The conservative movement that has dominated American politics for the last three decades is sputtering toward the end of its relevance. Its various factions, so willing in the past to put their differences aside in service of the goal of obtaining and holding power, are heading for a civil war. Whether the movement can remake itself will determine whether progressives are beginning their own long period of ideological supremacy.
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