The curse of financial entrepreneurship

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

I saw it and heard it in early 2016 in Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa where I conducted in focus groups: Whenever I mentioned the establishment presidential candidates Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton, people told me they didn’t stand a chance. Instead, the people I interviewed were excited by Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. (A remarkable number said they supported both.)

Again and again, I heard references to the bailout of Wall Street as proof that the economy was “rigged” against ordinary Americans, and that America needed a president who would champion average working people. As Americans went to the polls later that year, 75 per cent said they were looking for a leader who would “take the country back from the rich and powerful.” They obviously didn’t get one. Trump masqueraded as a tribune of the working class but was a Trojan horse for the rich and powerful.

We are still living with the political and social consequences of America’s turn to financial entrepreneurship. The five biggest Wall Street banks could not have scored record profits these past two years were they not back to many of the same practices that caused them to implode in 2008 and the rest of America to pay the price. Inequalities of income and wealth are far wider now than they were when Wall Street’s bubble burst. I suspect even more Americans today feel the system is rigged by the rich and powerful than they did a few years ago.

It doesn’t have to remain this way. We are not prisoners of bad decisions made in the past. We can and should rein in Wall Street, break up its five giant “too-big-to-fail” banks, support local and state banks, resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act’s divide between investment and commercial banking, tax all financial transactions — and rebuild jobs and wages on the product side of the American economy.

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/curse-financial-entrepreneurship

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. People supported BOTH Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump???

Oh, dear lord. Those people clearly had almost no understanding of either man. Scary. And it's what's so very wrong with this country.

[Slammer]

2. contrast

It's just the phenomena of people looking for something different.

Before the 2016 election cycle, it was the same group of people looking at Bernie Sanders or Ron Paul.

Ron Paul and Trump are nothing alike just as Sanders and Trump are nothing alike. But all three have earned an avid following from a large group who would have taken any of the three of them over any of the more traditional candidates of the major parties.

Hey, I don't mind different as long as it's better. But I'm not looking for different for the sake of being different.

Ron Paul would have made a great person to appoint to government to look out for officials who were redecorating their offices unnecessarily or who were wasting paperclips. Any kind of wasteful government spending could always be spent instead for a better purpose.

In contrast, Trump isn't fit for any purpose because he'd spend his time trying to figure out how to grift from the government or get kickbacks for doing his job...even if he had to steal paperclips and sell them on a street corner.