Dean Baker: Why Didn't We Make These Guys Run Around Naked With Their Underpants Over Their Heads?

[chill_wind]

Dean Baker: Why Didn't We Make These Guys Run Around Naked With Their Underpants Over Their Heads?

Wednesday 14 September 2011
by: Keane Bhatt, Truthout | Interview

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy (CEPR) in Washington, DC.


(Photo courtesy of Dean Baker)

Economist Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy (CEPR) in Washington, DC. In his most recent book, "The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive," Baker argues that the market is politically structured to ensure that income flows upward.

http://www.truth-out.org/dean-baker-why-didnt-we-make-these-guys-run-around-naked-their-underpants-over-their-heads/131585621

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Really good interview. Just one excerpt:

KB: Your book makes a strong case that the neoclassical school's appreciation of markets is mediated by power relations. For example, immigration quotas, which block freer movement of professional labor that would undercut overpriced US lawyers and doctors, are an unchallenged form of protectionism. At the outset of the 2008 crisis, however, it seemed that even this selective belief in efficient markets would implode. But it seems to stagger on as a zombie ideology - Alan Greenspan seems to have actually retracted his mea culpa for being so wrong in the past. Do you see any hopeful signs for a new, more accurate economics?

DB: It's been very interesting. I think part of it is that people are wrong to say it was free-market fundamentalism because it wasn't - they weren't being honest. So it gives Greenspan an easier out because it's a really confused ideology. If you're an honest Ayn Rander - and I'm not putting words in his mouth, she actually was Greenspan's hero and his book mentions how much he admired her - you would've expected this. What was going on? You had these Wall Street honchos that were stealing. They were stealing from everyone. Stealing from the people taking out bad mortgages; stealing from the people that bought these junk mortgage-backed securities; and they were stealing from their shareholders - that's because they were taking on enormous risk and a lot of shareholders like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers lost their shirts. But what would Ayn Rand say? These were supermen, they were great guys, they're not bothered by that. So Greenspan should've expected this. If the cops - and he's the cop - are on the sidelines saying, "Go ahead: steal, steal, steal," well, what do you expect? These brilliant guys who are out for themselves are going to steal and that's exactly what happened.

Part of the point of the book, I think, is to clear up some confusion here. We were not living in a world of laissez-faire. These guys were in a situation where they were allowed to steal by state structures like the implicit guarantee of too-big-to-fail, which basically gave them the green light. And after the fact, nobody pays any consequences. There have been no serious investigations of higher-ups; only a few lower-ranking people here and there.

Here's the downloadable book:

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/books/the-end-of-loser-liberalism

[saras]

1. Stupid title, great article. He pretty much nails it. +(10^100)^(10^100)

And the fact that we can't deal with it because so many Americans hold these same stupidly flawed ideas and refuse to recognize their failures in the real world.

"In reality, the vast majority of the right does not give a damn about free markets; it just wants to redistribute income upward"
There's the Tea Party in a single sentence.

"Progressives help to ratify the actions of conservatives by accusing them of allegiance to a free-market ideology instead of attacking them for pushing the agenda of the rich."
There's the Democratic Party's problem in a single sentence.

"Corporations do not exist in the natural world or in the free market; they have to be chartered by a government."
The rationale for public rule over corporations in a single sentence.

But let me guess - he's "unelectable" because too many DLCers have some kind of irrational personal hatred for the guy.

[chill_wind]

3. I'm beginning to think some of the worst kookfarts from The Tea Party

and the worst cat-food commissioners have been doing this as a matter of course and preference.
(run around with their underwear over their heads) It's impossible to justify their ultra-greedy imperviousness to what they've been doing to the country by any actual sane measure.

[supernova]

2. Great book

It's available for download for free. I'm getting a copy for my Nook.