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In an article from our last print issue, Robert Kuttner reviews several authors who predicted the financial crisis:
Unlike Tolstoy’s unhappy families, bouts of extreme financial unhappiness are all basically alike, with variations only in the details. At bottom, they all involve speculation, deception, and failed regulation. The beginning of wisdom is to understand what went wrong and to grasp the parallels to history’s other financial catastrophes. The paramount challenge of the Obama administration will be to repair the consequences of financial collapse and make sure it doesn’t recur — something we thought had been accomplished once and for all by the New Deal. It is an ill wind that blows no good, and books are already starting to appear on the crash’s causes and cures.
And Ezra Klein reviews several books that explore how to reorganize markets:
The most telling line in Lawrence Brown and Lawrence Jacobs’ The Private Abuse of the Public Interest comes on the first page and was not written by the authors. Rather, it is a quotation from former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey. “Markets are smart,” says Armey. “Government is dumb.” This is an enormously illuminating statement. Markets, after all, are not “smart,” and smart people do not claim otherwise. Rather, markets are supposed to be efficient. There is a difference. A man who finds himself in a convenience store without sufficient funds for his purchase might decide that the most efficient method of obtaining cash is to rob the register. He might well be right. But he would not be smart. He would not be wisely considering his own future or soberly evaluating the possible consequences of his actions. A Hostess cupcake is not worth jail time.
Courtney Martin argues that diversity in the media is lagging behind diversity in our politics:
But what about that other critical ingredient to a democracy that doesn’t just function, but flourishes: a public debate that draws on all of the best resources and wisdom that the country has to offer? Doesn’t Obama crave the same kind of representation, the same meeting of dissimilar minds, the same chance to see the most worthwhile policy ideas, opinions, and strategic thinking rise to the top? He certainly can’t appoint media owners or pundits, but he has — thus far — missed an opportunity to express his dismay at the still overwhelmingly white, male make-up of American media, home of our anemic public conversation.
And Paul Edenfield explains how Democrats protected independent agencies from Bush administration interference:
These pro forma sessions, used by the current Senate since the Thanksgiving recess of 2007, have prevented the president from exercising his constitutional authority to make appointments during congressional recess that would otherwise require Senate confirmation. Although derided as a childish stunt by some editorial pages, the use of pro forma sessions to block the recess appointment of nominees whom Senate leaders were unwilling to confirm was more than empty symbolism. Preventing the seating of certain nominees, particularly to independent agencies, was a clever strategy that may have prevented the current administration, now in its waning days, from having had an even greater impact on federal policy than it actually did.
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--The Editors
