In other words, the banks emerged from the crisis bigger, more powerful, and more systemically dangerous than ever before. They are playing by most of the old rules and all of the old norms. We are now left with six gargantuan, interconnected, too-big-to-fail financial institutions that are a threat to our economy and our democracy. Johnson and Kwak (and Stiglitz and Roubini and Mihm) believe they need to be broken up. It seems almost certain this will not happen.To avoid reeking of sloth, we pulled some startling, dog-bites-man (over & over) news ourself:
We are, Johnson and Kwak argue almost too convincingly, in the hands of an oligarchy that has used its economic power to purchase political influence that, in turn, sustains that economic power. Worse, Wall Street and Washington have become so inbred that ideological homogeneity reinforces and legitimizes an implicitly corrupt system. The crisis and the necessary bailouts presented a rare opportunity to break the iron grip of this financial oligarchy, but we failed to seize this moment."Argue almost too convincingly?" What's that mean? Still refusing to face reality?
We'd as soon drown in our own vomit as read the entire review (A review of four books bound to be popular w/ the sort who read these kinds of books shouldn't be too hard. Don't let our lassitude discourage you.) but as we scanned we did spot this, which should probably be shouted from the rooftops & widely repeated on the Internet.
It is now clear that two foundations of anti-Keynesianism—rational expectations and the efficient-markets hypothesis, both of which are embraced by mainstream economics despite the absence of empirical support—are simply wrong.Neener neener, you idiots.
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