Yes. She is also right to warn of bloody revolutions arising as a direct result of fat cats taking too much, feeling too confident of their power.

Remember that the American Revolution was pitched, at a theoretical level, against the divine right of kings to rule. We have busily re-invented kings in our present society, by different names (CEOs). This rose, by another name, smells just about as sweet.

Capitalism is archetypally American; but our present Super-Capitalism is *anti*-American, *un*-American–contrary to the principles this nation was founded on.

Now we get to see the concept’s material consequence. It threatens solvency and sovereignty, in equal measure. How will we unlearn the habits that have created it?

Phil Stewart

One post said that he admired the civility of the debate. Actually Tom Ashbrook’s guests are usually quite civil. Posner was the least civil guest I’ve heard in a while. Tom – good on you for taking him to task.

I very much agree with the post who said that Tom should invite some of the up and coming crowd. People like Posner already have gotten too much air time. Just because he got a book published that seems to do little more than try to capitalize off the current debacle is no reason to give him air time.

Posted by Richard, on May 7th, 2009 at 9:25 am EDT

Richard,
I like Reich and think his suggestion in his latest book that we not tax corporations has merit. However his idea in curing the US employment problem by exporting unemployment to other countries by rsising tariffs is old fashioned and a recipe for world economic disasters. I was amazed that he should say such a thing on PBS
Aled Owen

Even though there are versatile informations available out there, but if we are not so interested in balance and check our views, most likely our views are formed by being exposed to the major TV networks and other major medias, especially when it comes to the opinions of other countries in the world.

I came from another culture, at times I am just standing there speechless by listening to how so called “experts” here talk about systems and cultures of other countries. Those experts can be so clueless. It is almost scary to think they are the ones out there spreading false informations and views, and most of the people kind of just take it like it is without delving into the facts.

Tom makes a great program, day in, and day out. But he would do his listeners a great service to do away with these aging “sages” and interview some of the bloggers that predicted this crisis from the start. They’re not hard to find – Ben Jones at the Housing Bubble blog, Mike Shedlock, the Calculated Risk blog. These are fairly ordinary people who presented strong evidence for the coming financial meltdown, years before it happened. Come on Tom, we’ve seen how badly the Ivy League-approved Ideologues have hurt our country – lets hear from some up-and-commers who present facts.

Very true, trading globally began since the dawn of human civilization. But what really changed the dramatic scale of it is the “industrialization”. Industrialization is like a gigantic turning wheel and black hole thats sucks everything out of this planet and in return putting the toxin back in it.

After all, at the end of the day, this planet is still standing and existing, and will not miss a thing about human being.

Fully agreed. I always have problem with whatever the **ism is, we constantly label ourselves that traps ourselves into these **ism box. Really, it’s time to practice “practicality”. It is so true that we need to evolve ourselves around the resources and renewable resources of this planet (even the renewable resources takes energy to produce, so we have to be careful of how to generate these energy), instead the planet evolve around us, and the fact and the lesson we learn is, there’s no such a thing that the planet evolves around us, human have been very arrogant for too long.

Um, you do realize those are largely socialist ideal, right?

While these ideals might be part of a socialist governments makeup they do not mean that it is what defines such a government. Canada seems to me to be a pretty well entrenched in the capitalist world. It has a capitalist system of trade, and so on. Cuba is a socialist country, or I should say a communist. All the institutions are run by the state.

I would say that your confused about the difference between social democratic countries, such as Canada, Sweden, Holland, and so on.

These countries do not have state owned industries, which is one of the things that define a socialist country.

For instance Switzerland has a national health care system, a socialist idea one could say, but the people still buy health insurance through private companies.
The companies are regulated by the state, but one could hardly call Switzerland a socialist country, far from it.

Your point about the effect of an interest cap to prevent usury, and, more important, the broader negative effects of it, are excellent. I have wrestled for many years with what constitutes usurious rates and why there are frequently laws against usury. I finally found an explanation only this year, and it’s consistent with your point.

Basically, high interest rates divert investment away from productive and socially useful production of goods and services; it is a sign of a deteriorating economy when the usury sphere greatly increases as it has since dereg got rolling. It’s even worse than it looks because the various expensive fees no charged by banks are not included, even though the account for very large portions of bank profits.

So the fact that financial “service” biz has increased from about 15% to 30% of GDP and 40% of profits should be alarming to everyone because it’s a sign of an economy in deep trouble.

And, by the way, to those who think a lot of credit card usage is for frilly stuff, Elizabeth Warren in the Two Income Trap has thoroughly debunked this notion. She has recently called attention to the fact that the median family income has been DECLINING (NOT merely “stagnant” as claimed by just about every journalist. A lot of consumer credit has been used instead to make up for the shortfall caused by endlessly declining real wages (the CPI is ridiculously rigged to hide the true rate of inflation – like not including health insurance, college tuition, and the cost of housing!!).

The most rabidly anti-tax and anti-collectivist among us (WalMart for instance) are often the most dependent upon these collectively acquired societal assets.

Second point, isn’t it possible that upper management pay that is not tied to performance had a little something to do with risky decision making? Your guests seemed to gloss over that aspect and jump right on trader compensation practices.

A usury cap would limit the profit a bank could make by damaging the credit rating and adding to the debt load of an individual or business.

This is such a complete waste of the wages that would otherwise go to buying things people need or want – items which require jobs to make, distribute, and sell.

It wasn’t Alan Greenspan’s fault the investment banks were awash in cash. It was the fault of the regulators who saw no reason to protect the little guys while the big guys drove the economy off a cliff.

I think it is important that the mortgage market didn’t fail with the introductory rates that were given to homeowners. Homeowners were always able to make those payments. It failed when the banks raised those rates, sometimes doubling or tripling payments. The wild contracts started more than five years before the ultimate implosion.

If the introductory rates – still often much higher than a prime rate – had been a real rate, the housing market would have been sustainable.

Again, the idiots to blame are those who should have been regulating the banks, instead of golfing with them.

I found Judge Posner’s overly broad statements and his failure to limit them during cthe discussion rather alarming. He has chosen an advocation writing about Chicago economic theory & on air he denies his previous writings and first impressions in his current tome. He fears “over”-regulation, but is cavalier about the twin robberies of the Public Purse – the S&L scandals & this meltdown which used basically the same mechanism. They wrote as many mortgages as they could in both instances. Then they bundled them regardless of risk and sold them upstream. In the S&L instance the damage was limited somewhat to the domestic US market. In the present instance they could make larger bundles and sell them worldwide & get their commissions on larger leverage (30+ X).

Let’s look to Canada for some help on this mess.

I guess we just don’t agree about this. (Also, I took you more seriously before I got the the “Assbrook” thing. Come on.)

I am not an avid Tom Ashbrook fan (I only listen to shows which have a topic of specific interest to me) but I find him likeable and pretty calm. Generally, this show included, guests go on at length without interruption. If they try to slide by a point, or ignore a fair question, it is Tom’s job to push them. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

I avoid American news these days because I frankly can’t stand listening to people screaming talking points over one another in lieu of a real debate. I simply don’t see that happening here. I maintain that a comparison with CNN or, especially, Fox is completely ridiculous.