Monday, October 29, 2012

Book thirty-five: Pity the Billionaire by Thomas Frank

I want to quote this book in its entirety. If someone wants to recommend a book that clearly is written for the folks on the other side, I'll read it. But it can't be from the following: Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh. Find me a well-known and respected economist or something. It seems a bit wrong to only read the books that I figure are going to align with my own beliefs from the get-go.
"...the Tea Party Movement, which understands itself as an expression of "the great American entrepreneurial spirit," [Rep. Pompeo]...whose actual function has been to ensure that an economic collapse brought on by Wall Street does not result in any unpleasant consequences for Wall Street."
"The Tea Partiers aren't the pawns of big business; because they believe in markets, they're the sworn enemies of big business. Got that?"
"...Greenspan confessed to feeling 'shocked disbelief' at all that had gone on. Testifying to a House committee in October 2008, he said, "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifcally banks and others, [was] such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms." "You found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right," ... "Precisely,"..."
"Our leaders have been chasing the free-market dream for thirty-some years now, and for every step closer they've brought us, the more inequality has grown, the more financial bubbles have blossomed and burst, the more political corruption has metastisized, the harsher the business cycle has become...They're [the latest Right] in a place where beliefs don't really have consequences, where premises are not to be checked, only repeated in a louder voice. It is as though the frightening news of recent years has driven them into a defensiveness so extreme that they feel they must either deify the system that failed or lose it altogether." 
35 down plus 17 to go.

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