The Return of Madcap Capitalism... by Robert Parry

[kentuck]

an excellent summation of how we got to where we are today.
===============

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/051410.html

<snip>



The Return of Madcap Capitalism

By Robert Parry
May 14, 2010

For much of the post-World War II era, there was a broad consensus that well-regulated capitalism – paired with an effective public sector – was the economic model that worked best, especially compared with the Soviet Union’s heavy-handed central planning or the madcap capitalism that had led to the Great Depression.

The harsh Soviet approach failed to meet basic consumer needs, and laissez-faire capitalism was too susceptible to the boom-and-bust cycles that brought on the Great Depression. President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal had charted a middle course that let capitalists make money producing and selling products while the government constrained capitalism’s worst excesses.

<snip>

Amid relentless anti-government propaganda and endless pressures for more deregulation, madcap capitalism has returned. The consequences can now be seen from the desolate factory towns in Michigan to the oil spill poisoning the Gulf of Mexico, from teacher layoffs in California to crazy market swings on Wall Street.

<snip>
For several decades now, the Right has invested heavily in think tanks and media outlets that trumpet the “magic of the market” and deride “big government.” The Republicans have relied on this same propaganda machinery to drive “wedge issues” into the American public, exploiting grievances over race and social changes.

The Right‘s propaganda system is now so advanced and dominant that it has convinced not only Tea Partiers but large segments of the U.S. population that the answer to their current economic woes is less government interference and perhaps more tax cuts benefiting the rich.

...........more