Establishment Populism Rising

New York Times ^ | March 4, 2015 | By Thomas B. Edsall

[Brad from Tennessee]

Larry Summers, who withdrew his candidacy for the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve under pressure from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party in 2013, has emerged as the party’s dominant economic policy strategist. The former Treasury secretary’s evolving message has won over many of his former critics.

Summers’s ascendance is a reflection of the abandonment by much of the party establishment of neo-liberal thinking, premised on the belief that unregulated markets and global trade would produce growth beneficial to worker and C.E.O. alike.

Summers’s analysis of current economic conditions suggests that free market capitalism, as now structured, is producing major distortions. These distortions, in his view, have resulted in gains of $1 trillion annually to those at the top of the pyramid, and losses of $1 trillion every year to those in the bottom 80 percent. . .

[Brad from Tennessee]

The current hollowed-out economy we have today is owned by Barack Obama. But Thomas B. Edsall blames free market economics. He and Larry Summers would introduce stimulus mechanisms that could cripple or kill many U.S. businesses.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Will the 2016 campaign theme be … populist control? (”Hold off giving me over a million dollars”)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3264120/posts

[Buckeye McFrog]

translation: Populist mobs are coming and they intend to eat us alive. Those of us who throw them a few scraps and try to make nice now may survive.

[Zuben Elgenubi]

Summers is just plain dense. He hasn’t figured out that the Harvard lesbian cabal who drove him out of his Harvard presidency, will NEVAH forgive him and will hound him for the rest of his life.

[Spirochete]

New York Times. Nope.

[Usagi_yo]

“Summers defied economic orthodoxy. He dismissed as “whistling past the graveyard” the widely accepted view that improving education and job training is the most effective way to reduce joblessness.”

Is he clueless or what? ‘improving education’ and ‘job training’ are doublespeak for redistribution of money. Nothing ever got fixed by throwing more bureaucracy at it.

[RatRipper]

Yep, Larry, and much Democrat law and regulation crippled the little guy in favor of the fat cats. Look no further than Dodd-Frank and the burgeoning body of regulation it spawned, most of which favored the Wall Street banks over community banks, resulted in vastly more concentrated banking assets among a few institutions, and left “too big to fail” firmly entrenched, the polar opposite of how it was billed.

If you are for the “little guy”, the absolute worst thing you can do is vote for a Democrat.

[1010RD]

free market capitalism, as now structured

Edsall is either incredibly ignorant or a willful liar. There is no need to structure a free market. It's free.

[T Ruth]

a reflection of the abandonment by much of the party establishment of neo-liberal thinking

You can't believe anything you read in the nyt. It's leftist propaganda.

[x]

Summers’s analysis of current economic conditions suggests that free market capitalism, as now structured, is producing major distortions. These distortions, in his view, have resulted in gains of $1 trillion annually to those at the top of the pyramid, and losses of $1 trillion every year to those in the bottom 80 percent

Something tells me Larry will manage to land on his feet.

[griswold3]

’ Nothing ever got fixed by throwing more bureaucracy at it.’
This is true. But just think of all the government jobs created while establishing programs that attempt to fix the problem. Of course, the objective is never to correct the problem because then they’d be out of a job.