Doin' the Reading Railroad

Ok, no posts for quite a while. Not dead, just slightly retiring.

Anyway, been reading a lot, lately mostly economics history. I must admit to a distinct neo-Keynesian bent. ala Krugman I suppose.
The latest is "Grand Pursuit" by Sylvia Nasar. Not too technical (aka wonkish) but interesting especially in the "times in which we live". IOW - the great recession.

A few perceptive comments made along the way, and a few thoughts as well:

"Governments of democracies risk violence if they are foolish enough to leave the econoimc circumstances of their citizens to chance."
This is pretty much what happened in the run-up to 2007. And it's still generally true. Little oversight of an "industry" - if you can call unfettered quasi-banking that at all - that created our currernt mess. I says a great deal about our society that it generally has NOT led to violence. But that doesn't mean it can't in the future.

"Dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly." (Keynes)
Which brings us to the ethical concepts and principles behind the people in positions where they are capable of those acts. Although generally I do not love media, they are right to expose the inadequacies of candidates for political office (among many others). It comes to a contest of "
who do you trust". Unfortunately, just about all political people fail at the trust thing. I place that as the major cause of poor and falling voter turnout during elections. Who do you vote for when you can't trust any of the candidates? Hvaing a choice in this case means not having a choice at all. So the only voters are those with a belief, or an agenda. And they vote for the individual, or party, that seems to exemplify those beliefs or agendas.
This accounts nicely for the powere associated with "blocs", be they religious, financial, or otherwise political. Political poweer then becomes extreme in its association with the pursuit of that agenda. The religious right and the banks in the US are obvious examples, as is the Tea Party.

As to OWS (Occupy Wall Street): there have been multitudes of ad hominem attacks on the protesters. Aside from the fact that they miss the point of questioning the practices of Wall Street, they also lack the proper historical perspective: ideological protests must come from the semi-favored class. They are the only group with the combination of time, money, education, and intelligence to mount such protests. The lower-economic classes (and I do NOT mean that in any disparaging way) are too busy just getting by.
Only the favored can devote the time to "occupy" anywhere - everyone else needs to work to get by.
Only the favored are moneyed enough to afford the trips, the time, (and yes, the cell-phones) to engage in a protest.
Only the favored have been able to educate themselves to understand what happens, and to realize where the problems are. And perhaps the solutions.
All revolutions require an "elite" if you will. Perhaps those who oppose the Occupy movement implicitly realize this - they know that ideas matter the most, and economic ideas sometimes the most of all.