Progressive Opinion

salon.com — Who is ready to shed a tear for Wall Street? The moguls bet big, and lost. Now, if we are to believe their whining, they are preparing to pay the piper. If, during the negotiations to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” President Obama plays a level of hardball that was in short supply for most of his first term, the wealthiest Wall Streeters might see a return to Clinton-era income tax rates on the rich. Anything more meaningful, like a hike in the tax rate on capital gains, or an end to the exemption for carried interest, will require a major breakthrough — successfully bashing through the obstructionism of House Republicans who seem unlikely to accede to any elements of Obama’s agenda, no matter how forcefully the president seeks them. So come on, if the sharp drop in the stock market this week really was Wall Street’s reaction to Obama’s win, then the 1 percent doth protest too much.

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There are two types of money that corrupt our politics. After a national election that cost more than $2 billion, most of us know about the blatant kind that floods into politicians’ campaigns, typically with quid pro quo strings attached. This is the most obvious form of legalized bribery—cash goes in, policy positions and legislative favors eventually come out. As powerful as that money is, though, there’s also a second, equally corrosive form of payoff—the kind that awaits campaign staff and outgoing government officials if and when they enter the world of influence peddling. This more secret form of corruption tends to generate far less outrage than ho-hum rationalizations. For this reason, you almost never hear about it—that is, until the last few weeks, when a series of coincidental revelations provided a rare look at how this dark money really works. more »

thenation.com — If Congress fails to defuse the threat of the post-election “fiscal cliff,” austerity will be in the saddle for sure. The International Monetary Fund, not usually known for dire forecasts, predicts increased risk of worldwide stagnation, and has warned specifically against the “excessive fiscal consolidation” of austerity measures. Why haven’t the presidential candidates talked about this? Maybe for the same reason they didn’t talk about global warming: they saw no votes in either. Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke, almost alone among influential officials, has been sounding the alarm in his understated, scholarly manner. The former Princeton economics professor is an authority on the Great Depression, and especially on the danger of cutting back government stimulus prematurely before a vigorous recovery is established. Bernanke has vowed that he will not repeat the big mistake the New Dealers made in the 1930s.

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economix.blogs.nytimes.com — One of the most important results on Tuesday was the election of Elizabeth Warren as United States senator from Massachusetts. Her victory matters not only because it helps the Democrats keep control of the Senate but also because Ms. Warren has a track record of speaking truth to authority on financial issues – both to officials in Washington and to powerful people on Wall Street. How much can a new senator accomplish? Within hours of her victory, some commentators from the financial sector suggested that no freshman senator could achieve much. This is wishful thinking on their part.

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robertreich.org — By now, in these last remaining days before the election of 2012, we have learned enough about the beliefs of the Republican presidential candidate to see them as a worldview all its own – a kind of creed that explains Mitt Romney. Those who say he has no principles are selling him short. Despite its contradictions and ellipses, Romneyism has an internal coherence. It is different from conservatism, because it does not intend to conserve or protect any particular institutions or values. It is also distinct from Republicanism, in that it is not rooted in traditional small-town American values, nationalism, or states’ rights. The ten guiding principles of Romneyism are.

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huffingtonpost.com — The enormity of last week's super-storm is just beginning to sink into political consciousness. Hurricane Sandy should transform what Americans expect from their government, and give the party of government activism new force.

As soon as the election is behind us, the country faces a major struggle over what the super-storm portends and requires. But that struggle will be as much within the Democratic Party as between Democrats and the right, because of the deadweight of austerity politics.

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thenation.com — At a moment when political minds are fixed anxiously on Washington, it’s useful to remember where the real power resides. In this election, wealthy corporations and individuals have shown yet again how they can purchase politicians and pervert the democratic process. Progressives have no choice but to try to counter these forces through massive ground operations at election time, but that doesn’t always work—and even when it does, the rigged game always begins anew the day after, with corporate lobbyists working their magic on many of the same officials progressives just knocked themselves out to elect. So why not take the fight to the businesses and billionaires who are pulling the strings?

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economix.blogs.nytimes.com — Prominent voices within the financial sector are increasingly insisting on one point: We have ended “too big to fail.” The idea is simple: through a combination of legislation (the Dodd-Frank legislation of 2010) and supportive regulation (particularly regarding how big banks would be handled in the event of “liquidation”), very large financial institutions are no longer perceived by investors to be too big to fail. Unfortunately, while tempting, this idea is completely at odds with the facts. The market perception that some financial institutions are “too big to fail” is alive and well. If you want to remove that perception, you need to break up our biggest banks.

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propublica.org — Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage giant, made it harder for millions of Americans to refinance their high-interest-rate mortgages for fear it would cut into company profits, present and former Freddie Mac officials disclosed in recent interviews. In closed door meetings, two Republican-leaning board members and at least one executive resisted a mass refi policy for an additional reason, according to the interviews: They regarded it as a backdoor economic stimulus. Freddie's policy was financially brutal: During the worst years of the Great Recession, when homeowners most needed the savings they could have gotten from refinancing to lower interest rates, Freddie helped keep millions of borrowers locked in high-interest-rate mortgages.

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guardian.co.uk — Gore Vidal, the recently demised American writer, once famously quipped that the US economic system is "free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich". Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, not only has the US lived up to Vidal's caricature but the whole of the rich capitalist world has become more "American". The poor are increasingly exposed to market forces, with tougher conditions on the diminishing state protection they get, while the rich have unprecedented levels of protection from the state, with virtually no strings attached.

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