6 Comments

"The Banks Did It" looks interesting, but I cannot bear watching a hour and a half. [Also forgive my prejudice, but I'm skeptical of a discussion with not one of the three is an economist.]

Yes, the banks did do the financial crisis, took imprudent risks. The real question is why the equity holders and managers did not suffer more for their mistakes? Why is Jaime Dimon still managing a bank and not a Burger King franchise? The failure to see the "bad guys" suffer surely contributed to the distemper of 2009.

Nevertheless, a proper Fed response should have made this an incident that was soon forgotten. There is just no excuse for undershooting the inflation target when the economy was nowhere near full employment

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Re yesterdays sharp fall in the TIPS and today's 0.75% announcement .... Hmmm. Smart speculation or did someone know something?

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I share your irritation with fundraising emails which I mostly delete. As an economist I'm offended because clearly these folks have never understood the Law of Diminishing Returns. Yesterday, I received no fewer than six emails from a candidate running for Senate in an adjacent state. That's a more or less average day for her campaign.

I'm of the opinion that small dollar fundraising is responsible for the current degree of polarization in this country. You don't tell people that you want to go to Washington to support reasonable bipartisan compromises. Instead you promise to foil the opposition's evil plots to socialize/ make fascist our society. Phony polls are a favored tactic to induce donations. So too, is a guilt inducing"gift" to spur donations. We've never donated to Medisans Frontiers but we've gotten at least for tote bags from them.

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This is super relevant and on point. I don't have a general issue with the age of Democratic leadership, but I do think it leads to very poor understanding of the possibilities that the internet offers. In contrast, the youngsters such as AOC, do seem to understand the possibilities much better.

I don't know that an organization that isn't tied to a candidate is going to work though, because organizationally speaking, the parties are almost empty shells. They have no trademark or IP, so they can't enforce "X is not a Democrat" or "Y is not a Republican". If they could have, they would have done so with Donald Trump, for instance.

And consequently, I don't think an organization such as your are describing is gonna work. It wouldn't take a lot of funding, but it would take a little. There are possibilities, but they would be more of an external organization thing.

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A column near and dear to me!!! I've been voting since 1968 when the voting age was still 21 and have been a reliable Democratic voter in the four states that I have lived in. I've worked on get out to vote organizing in my younger days but have grown so disenchanted with the national party that I will not give them one penny going forward. I do contribute to Eric Holder's group that is focusing on voting rights but that is it. The Democrats lost their way some years ago. Obama had a bunch of rocket scientists working on his first campaign and they helped target voters through social media. IIRC, none of this was turned over to the national party.

Howard Dean was the last head of the national party that I had any respect for. Now one of the more recent heads is running for governor of my state, Maryland, and for some bizarre reason the WaPo thinks that this makes him the best choice in the upcoming primary. I don't and won't be voting for him. Until the Democrats learn the lessons that Stacey Abrams figured out six years ago they will continue to wander in the wilderness blaming (fill in the name) for all their troubles..

Get rid of all the consultant grifters and focus on getting people registered and out to vote.

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