Is America being increasingly dominated by an economic oligarchy? Simon Johnson an MIT Management Professor who was former Chief Economist of the IMF thinks so. Johnson has advocated nationalizing the banks and argues that in fact that has happened to some degree. But it’s important to ask who has taken over whom, because if the foxes have taken over the henhouse, then one way to regard the Tea Party movement is as a protest movement against the transfer of wealth from the taxpayers to this new and immovable elite. If the links between the regulated and the regulator grow ever tighter, will Hope and Change result in effort to break the power of the oligarchy (assuming it exists) or become a program to concentrate control in their hands? Open thread.
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So is it the bankers versus the tea partiers, good versus evil or Conan versus Red Sonja? The Daily Mail reports that a number of comic books featuring Barack Obama as an action figure are being planned. And his nemesis is none other than … you guessed it. Maybe the reason the top Republicans seem so colorless is that the situation is either altogether too charged for incrementalism or because the way back is so hard that we can’t face the prospect of righting the ship by inches.
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