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Buy the Book
Root Hog, or Die
Thomas Frank is an earnest liberal confounded by conservatism’s revival under Obama.
(Page 2 of 3)
Here’s how he puts it: “For the master Spirits of our contemporary Right [it’s] straightforward sympathy for the billionaire plus tangled rationalizations for the death or humiliation of everyone else. The game is finally up for the whiners of the world, they exult. The first shall be first. Root hog, or die.”
Thus, in that unpleasant, and nearly unhinged paragraph, Frank comes as close as any place in this strange, disconnected book, in which he seems to war with unspecified demons, to summing up his message. But despite all the noise, he doesn’t seem able to provide—or interested in providing—a coherent analysis of the causes of the 2008 financial collapse.
A DIFFICULT ASSIGNMENT, to be sure. But as a starting point, most observers, left or right, agree that it was brought on by the inevitable bursting of the housing bubble. But why was there a housing bubble in the first place? What caused that housing crisis? Frank refers to it as “‘foreclosuregate,’ the revelation…that banks had cut all sorts of legal corners in order to hustle borrowers to default out of their houses as quickly as possible.”
That’s no doubt part of it. But many respected economists and commentators—none of whom are mentioned in Frank’s’ book—believe it was the direct result of government policies.
In The Housing Boom and Bust, for instance, the respected economist Thomas Sowell describes just how the scam worked. At some point it became apparent to politicians that increasing home ownership among low-income people—people with bad credit and no money for the conventional down payment—could create a whole new political constituency. This became the “underserved population,” to whom politicians like Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd set out to pander.
Governmental agencies reporting to Congress pressured lending institutions they regulated to loosen loan requirements and revise them downward. In effect, lending quotas were established, and if banks were reluctant to lower standards to serve “the underserved population,” they could find it difficult to compete against more cooperative institutions. And so the loans became increasingly risky; and as the new “underserved” homeowners were unable to make payments, the money ran out.
For Frank, however, these issues are inconsequential. Barney Frank’s involvement is mentioned in a note explaining how Glenn Beck apparently confused Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with an insurance company. Christopher Dodd is mentioned in connection with the same company, and the complex and confusing Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, after the passage of which both Dodd and Frank left town, is referred to once in a long paragraph.
Nor are the roles of the government banks Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae examined here. Frank brushes aside any need to take criticism of them seriously, citing—again, in a note—the conclusion of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, charged in 2009 with determining the causes of the collapse and issuing a report in early 2010, that loans guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie were “far less risky” than those issued by private lenders. And that’s pretty much what he has to say on the subject.
Interestingly, in the same note, he also tells us: “Full disclosure: My wife, Wendy Edelberg, worked for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission….” But it’s a little more than that. Frank’s wife, previously with the president’s Council of Economic Advisers and the Federal Reserve, and now an assistant director at the Congressional Budget Office, did a bit more than “work for” the commission. She was its executive director.
THE COMMISSION, whose 10 members reflected the composition of Congress in 2009 when it was formed—six Democrats, four Republicans—released its final report in early 2011, with the six Democrat members approving, three Republicans dissenting, and one member, Peter Wallison, a senior fellow at AEI, issuing an eloquent dissent (hard to believe that the spouse of the executive director seems not to be familiar with it), identifying governmental policies as the main cause of the collapse.
In May 2011, Wallison elaborated on his views in a strong and persuasive article in TAS.
The financial crisis, he argued, “would not have occurred if government housing policies had not fostered the creation of an unprecedented number of subprime and other risky loans immediately before the financial crisis began…it was the U.S. government’s housing policies—and nothing else—that were responsible for the 2008 financial crisis.”
In 1992, he writes, Congress mandated what were called “affordable housing loans” for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The initial goals required that 30 percent of all loans Fannie and Freddie brought in each year had to be made to low-income borrowers. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) increased this requirement, reaching 55 percent in 2007. “HUD took Congress’s enactment of the affordable housing goals as an expression of a congressional policy to reduce underwriting standards so that low-income borrowers would have greater access to mortgage credit.”
This put Fannie and Freddie into competition with the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), an agency charged with providing credit to low-income borrowers, and with subprime lenders like Country-wide (Senator Dodd’s favorite mortgage company). Add all this to the requirements under the Community Readjustment Act of 1977 (CRA), making mortgages available to borrowers below 80 percent of the median income in their communities, and “the inevitable result was a significant deterioration in underwriting standards.”
As a result, by 2008, “19.2 million out of the total of 27 million subprime and other weak loans in the U.S. financial system could be traced directly or indirectly to U.S. governmental housing policies.”
About the Author
John R. Coyne, Jr. a former White House speech-writer, is co-author with Linda Bridges of Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement (Wiley).
Letter to the Editor View all comments (60) | Leave a comment
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Kenny| 4.25.12 @ 6:49AM
Thank God the WSJ got rid of this clueless twit. He was taking up valuable space there with his gibberish.
Jack in Wi.| 4.25.12 @ 7:51AM
Romney is no revival of conservatism. He is it's deathnell. Conservatism died when it forgot the Constitution and pushed for endless war and bankruptcy.
Vox pop| 4.25.12 @ 6:57AM
Glen Beck should not be simply dismissed. He has awakened a new constituancy to the importance of ideas and ideology-good and bad. His talk-shows are simplistic, but he has done American Conservatism a service. Before Beck, who had heard of Alinsky's role in shaping Obama's agenda, for example? Precious few.
Appleby| 4.25.12 @ 7:08AM
The world is bad enough without wasting my precious free time reading bad books.
Mutt the Hoople| 4.25.12 @ 7:20AM
When Bush was President, my family had a six-figure income. When Obama was President, we're on food stamps. 'Nuf said.
Brad| 4.25.12 @ 1:23PM
But...But...don't you know that food stamps are in your economic best interest, not a six figure income! Tommy Franks said so!
/sarc off
I've said it before, I'll say it again -- the answer to Franks' question "What's the Matter With Kansas?" is simple:
"They Know About California. (Not to mention Michigan, Washington (DC and State), New York, Rhode Island...)"
Occam's Tool| 4.25.12 @ 8:19PM
Mutt: I'm very, very sorry, and I hope things get much better soon.
Myself, I'm going home to review some psychiatry CME.
Ted R.| 4.25.12 @ 7:22AM
inequality is the defining issue of our times. The Reagan era coincided with, and massively promoted, the return to levels of inequality that rival those of the roaring 20's. Inequality is both the cause, and the result, of tax and fiscal policies which have for the last 30 years systematically eroded equality of opportunity for the many, while bringing unimaginable riches to the few.
The conservatives' dissent on the proximate causes of the housing crisis, should get its due; close inspection of the record does seem to show that government policy encouraged too much risk taking on the part of borrowers. Curiously, though, as famous critics of government, conservatives (especially at TAS) pass over in the silence the role of government in dismantling the very regulatory regime put in place back in the Depression era, that constrained the profitability of banks by preventing them from engaging in riskier investment practices.
It was the Gingrich-era Republican Congress that, for the sake of greater inequality, put us first back on the path of the kind of moral hazard that resulted in the housing crisis.
Coyne claims that Democrats were trying to nab votes by working to loosen lending requirements. but that really makes no sense. Democrats were trying to promote homeownership amongst the lower classes, people who tend to vote Democrat already. They were trying to serve the interests of their constituents, not make some kind of power grab. And they did this in significant part because they saw how much Republican policymaking was exacerbating income inequality; the financial sector was going guns blazin' at the turn of the century; Democrats thought it was only fair to try and spread around some of the good fortune that the financial elite was enjoying. It might well have been misguided for them to do it in the way they did, but the Democrats' motives were right.
Inequality is the defining issue of our times. The bankers got their bailouts, big-time. But the rest of us have been left to suffer (either directly or indirectly) the fallout. Skyrocketing personal debt. Lost employment. A landscape of blasted opportunity. It IS the ideological merchants of the right, the Sophisters of our times like Beck, who have distracted and diverted good Reagan Democrats from the way the Republican elite (*ahem* that would be YOU, TAS) has pocketed their votes and stabbed them in the back.
How long do think they're going to keep buying what you're selling? Maybe just at least for one more election?
Calvin| 4.25.12 @ 9:08AM
"When you court the loony left, you inevitably get saddled with dogmatic constituents who devour their own."
We know what the loony left it Ted R. We didn't require a demonstration.
gearjammer| 4.25.12 @ 9:35AM
The 60's and 70's were paradise ? Is that right chum ? Reagan said go for it and it opened up an era of affluence for all who tried. I am not talking about decadent consumerism but a taste of the good life. As far as the vast fortunes that produce all the lack of equality=well Gates, Jobs, etc did happen. So did alot of overpaid phonies in media and entertainment. Free market rich earn it-those who work in media and entetainment monopolies do not and alost all are democrats. So mister liberal start by putting wage restrictions on your own rich overpaid jerks ! Plus, you pay no heed to the overbearing nature of big centralized government. Look what they are doing to farm families by restricting what their kids can do on the family farm. My father was a big poultry farmer once upon a time. At twelve I was strong as many men, hell I worked pretty hard-why is that your business ahole ? Shit they're gonna lock up farm parents cause their kids milked a cow-glory to Beck-he will point this idiocy out at least. You and Frank are my enemey-let us once and for all go to the fiekd of battle and settle this !
gearjammer| 4.25.12 @ 9:35AM
The 60's and 70's were paradise ? Is that right chum ? Reagan said go for it and it opened up an era of affluence for all who tried. I am not talking about decadent consumerism but a taste of the good life. As far as the vast fortunes that produce all the lack of equality=well Gates, Jobs, etc did happen. So did alot of overpaid phonies in media and entertainment. Free market rich earn it-those who work in media and entetainment monopolies do not and alost all are democrats. So mister liberal start by putting wage restrictions on your own rich overpaid jerks ! Plus, you pay no heed to the overbearing nature of big centralized government. Look what they are doing to farm families by restricting what their kids can do on the family farm. My father was a big poultry farmer once upon a time. At twelve I was strong as many men, hell I worked pretty hard-why is that your business ahole ? Shit they're gonna lock up farm parents cause their kids milked a cow-glory to Beck-he will point this idiocy out at least. You and Frank are my enemey-let us once and for all go to the fiekd of battle and settle this !
Doctor Right| 4.25.12 @ 10:00AM
As I've explained before, income inequality is the DEFINING ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTIC of a healthy, prosperous, and free nation.
You don't understand that, meaning you don't understand economics 101, meaning you shouldn't waste time commenting.
Ted R.| 4.25.12 @ 11:00AM
Yeah, right. Inequality is the defining characteristic of all human civilization since the agricultural revolution. What makes OUR civilization different, is that WE realize that inequality for its own sake is deeply illiberal. If you're going to bandy about your ham-fisted ignorance of the economic history of free societies, well... you I guess you're right at home in this Con cesspool.
Bob K.| 4.25.12 @ 12:04PM
Like most liberal democrats you and Thomas Frank ignore the social and cultural policies your political party played in making the current economic conditions. Here is a short summary to remind you:
Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" began the destruction of Black Families by in effect making the Federal Government the head of their households. You liberal Democrats continue to enthusiastically support every federal program that encouraged it and that encourages the breakdown of the family throughout the United States.
You are responsible for the Department of Education and it's huge Federal Education Programs which funds primarily it's huge bureaucracy and oversees a proven decline in the education of our children.
It is you liberals who have made it impossible to have low cost energy in the United States with your senseless support of an unscientific and now proven fraudulent Global Warming Movement which has made it impossible for us to have reasonably priced energy. Not to mention your support of an Environmental Movement that went off the tracks half a century ago.
You liberals have encouraged the growth of huge pensions for taxpayer funded federal, state and local government and school employees and teachers and now that these defined benefit funds are in trouble everywhere you see no solution but to keep on raising taxes to fund them.
There are many more examples but why carry coals to Newcastle?
The biggest problem with liberals like you and Thomas Frank is that you refuse to look in a mirror and ask why you helped to make the mess we are in.
You won't take responsibility. You never did and you never will. You think you have all the answers. You continue to ask: "Why won't they listen to us?" And you get angry and nasty when you get these facts thrown back into your faces.
Calvin| 4.25.12 @ 2:52PM
"...WE realize that inequality for its own sake is deeply illiberal."
This is an odd bunch of projection. The big O and most lefties don't care about the effects of equality of wealth. I saw the big O acknowledge that government revenues will go down with an increase in capital gains taxes but insist that it will at least be fair in one of his debates with Hillary. The Buffet tax of course is just a capital gains tax. The combination of big spender and not caring about total revenue makes him a worst case disaster. Like Ted R he searches for some issue that will get him past the next election. With regard to the predictable problems that are just a little in our future, they will jump of that bridge when they get there. I don't believe that anything they do will lead to wealth equality but it will move it from the productive to Democratic Party hacks and money bundlers. Progressives are unsustainable.
Occam's Tool| 4.25.12 @ 8:22PM
Inequality occurs whenn people are truly free, because people's skills are unequal. Government's purpose is to maximize freedom to the highest degree theoretically possible while allowing for the strictures of a reasonably orderly society.
Unequally shared blessings is the vice of Capitalism; equally shared miseries is the virtue of Socialism. That, of course, is Churchill; this is more precisely detailed in The Road to Serfdom. Ted, read your Hayek, AGAIN. Epic fail.
JP| 4.25.12 @ 2:13PM
The Banks you refer to are Wall St banks. And Wall St has been in the Dems pocket for 7 decades. You know not what you speak. For over a decade the mascot for income equality was none other than John Corzine (remember him? former Goldman Sachs executive, Dem Gov and Sen). And Corzine is about to be indicted in one of the largest thefts in history.
Gazinya| 4.26.12 @ 5:24PM
'But the Democrats motives were right.'?
So, if I am reading this correctly, you are saying, 'Though my actions have caused great harm to millions of my fellow citizens through 'economic dislocations' and the total collapse of long term savings, I should not be judged on the consequences of my actions but on the very fact that it was my noble and pure 'good intentions' that should be remembered.'
Is that what I am reading?
Bob K.| 4.25.12 @ 8:18AM
"Unpleasant and nearly unhinged" describes his writing style precisely. You could also add "incoherent." He lurched through an essay on Andrew Breitbart in this manner in the current issue of Harper's in which his editor, Lewis H. Lapham made a Tower of Babble out of an essay on the ignorance of American History.
And in the same issue is a well written essay on American Nationalism, a difficult subject, by John Lukacs who is not a native speaker of English.
It brings to mind the popular slang phrase: "Go figure!"
Betina| 4.25.12 @ 8:26AM
Used to be when detachment from reality was a symptom of a psychological disorder. You were sent somewhere or put under observation. Given meds and your minders hoped there was a cure. Nowadays you get a column in a major newspaper, foam at the mouth on a cable news network and get elected to the White House. Guess the democrat/Marxists/progressives/liberals/fascists really meant it way back when they set out to "de-institutionalize" the asylum residents. Little did the rest of us know that meant hearing from them every day.
Pelleas| 4.25.12 @ 7:42PM
"way back when they set out to "de-institutionalize" the asylum residents."
ACTUALLY--
It was (Then) Gov. Ronald Reagan who single handedly managed to flood the Streets of California cities, with evicted and unceremoniously dumped patients of the Mental Institutions which he had closed, as a "cost-effective measure"
Occam's Tool| 4.25.12 @ 8:28PM
Which was supported by Liberals eager to deinstitutionalize the patients and "re-integrate them in the community" while simultaneously giving incompetebnt patients the right to refuse treatment, as per Riese v. St. Mary's (the ACLU being the plaintiff attorney in that one, hardly Conservative)
Pelleas, there was plenty of blame to go all around, and most of it Liberal. Properly adjudicated and medicated, a lot of these people could do OK in the Community, but Liberals (the ACLU) made it very difficult to medicate.
Look up Riese versus St. Mary's. One of THE most moronic court decisions of my lifetime, costing taxpayers in many States Millions, if not Billions, in costs over the last 19 years.
Occam's Tool| 4.25.12 @ 8:29PM
"incompetent," as was my spelling. By the way, I trained as a Psychiatric Resident AT UCLA from 1989-1993. I experienced the consequences of the ACLU's butchery first hand.
Occam's Tool| 4.25.12 @ 8:31PM
Actually, Riese was decided in 1989. The cost of not being able to treat patients HELD INVOLUNTARILY UNDER 14 DAY HOLDS AFTER COURT REVIEW unless a SEPARATE petition was filed for involuntary medication is simply obscene to think about.
California does the WORST job of taking care of its indigent mentally ill of any place I have lived in. Yes, I am including rural Kentucky and Alabama.
Pelleas| 4.25.12 @ 9:33PM
OC:
The liberal community DID NOT SUPPORT the brutal way the hospitals and Institutions were GUTTED, and patients were left to fend for themselves, just so Governor Reagan could show how thrifty he was.
This insensitive action on the part of Reagan was one of the reasons that many of the downtown and Civic Center areas of California's major urban Areas--San Francisco, in particular- became instant hovels, for the dispossesed who had no other means of caring for themselves.
HOW---EXACTLY- did "liberals" make this untenable situation worse then it was, from the begining?
"
Appleby| 4.25.12 @ 9:12PM
New York State did this back in the days of JFK. Daddy used to test milk at the State Hospital in town, and he saw what happened when they opened the doors and invited the inmates to be "free". Their families didn't want them back; there were no community outreach hostels to take them in, and most of them were incapable of fending for themselves.
Freeing the mentally ill caused a serious rise in crime and the current shantytowns of the helpless and hopeless in every big city in North America. Just so some liberals could feel good about themselves in their gated communities and guarded fortress towers...
Ground Control| 4.26.12 @ 2:17AM
This is a falsehood that was debunked decades ago. It was a bill signed by Pat Brown (Reagan's immediate predecessor as Governor of California) that codified previous court decisions ordering the release of mental patients. Court decisions brought on by leftist groups who thought they were "unjustly held against their will." Your claim is patently false. Look it up, dumbo.
Pelleas| 4.26.12 @ 1:04PM
Ground control:
I am not talking about isolated incidents under the Governorship of Pat Brown, when the civil-rights of individuals were forceably and and many times, un justly institutionalized, and this illegal action was being protested by many, regardless of political affiliations.
Governor Reagan SLASHED THE BUDGET for mental-health services, in the State of California, to an OBSCENE low level, not because anyone was questioning the necessity of those facilities.. but ONLY to satisfy his own --and the extreme right wing of the Republican Party's desire to cut Government funding to the most helpless members of the State
look it up yourself...DUMBO...
Ground Control| 4.26.12 @ 11:37PM
I did, idiot. You simply repeat the myth. Ronald Reagan did NOT empty the asylums. You are wrong. And you need to grow up. And, the Governor has no power to "slash" any budget. Budgets are set by the Legislature.
Come back after your head is surgically removed from your butt.
JP| 4.25.12 @ 8:59AM
Thomas Frank's time at the WSJ was short because he is a poor columnist. I used to read his weekly column and wondered how he managed that gig. His prose was stale, cliche ridden, and poorly thought-out. Initially, his columns drew many comments; but, over time his readership there declined. It wasn't a surprise that he was quietly dropped after less than 3 years on the job.
Gary B| 4.25.12 @ 9:03AM
Another liberal boob who just says stuff...
gearjammer| 4.25.12 @ 9:37AM
To be frank is to lie.
Doctor Right| 4.25.12 @ 9:58AM
"...clever conservative leaders had manipulated American working people and middle class voters from voting their interests..."
As the great philosopher Bugs Bunny once said, "What a ma-roon!"
Isn't it funny how the left always assume that what's in our interests is more government, less personal wealth, and less freedom??
These leftist intelligentsia-types are, in fact, the least creative, least imaginative, most orthodox and conformist thinkers in society.
They despise anything that they don't understand, and since most of them are academics, they don't understand the free market. And if the specter of the free market ever enters their spheres - such as questioning the value of their "scholarship," or asking Professors to actually teach instead of write silly, inconsequential papers, they go ballistic.
This guy is a boob.
Stan Marsh | 4.25.12 @ 10:29AM
If Thomas Frank so despises the free market system, why does he make people pay to read his books? Just sayin'.
Anthony| 4.25.12 @ 10:43AM
Mr. Frank has been a proud member of the elite leftist " intellectual class" for as long as he's tried to fake his membership into said class.
He's just another in a long line of obnoxious, snotty, and vicious leftists with his head firmly planted up his ass, like our friends, Frank Rich, Evan Thomas, Tom Friedman, Paul Krugman, and the queen of lunacy herself, Maureen Dowd.
Wait when Novemeber comes and Obozo is soundly defeated, we'll hear these same jackasses bray like Pauline Kahl did after Nixon defeated McGovern, "But I don't know anybody who voted for Romney".
Of course, massive voter fraud this November could keep these loonies in their leftist dream world a bit longer, that is, until the riots start.
Pelleas| 4.25.12 @ 11:20AM
Do you mean..Pauline KAEL??..
Since President Obama will sail into his second term, leaving Mittens in the dust.. we won't have to worry about anyone saying anything, nu?
The spew on this site about "voter fraud" (BTW- wasn't it REPUBLICAN Richard Nixon who raised FRAUD to a new level??)- and "riots" is so stupidly paranoid..if it weren't so hilarious
Anthony| 4.25.12 @ 12:21PM
Pelleas, Other than getting Ms. Kael's name right, my bad, your post is pure leftist tripe.
What voter fraud did Mr.Nixon engage in? What member of his Justice Department did he insist thwart the voting process by insisting that voter I.D.s are inherently racist?
What R Secretary of State and legislature has put into place same day voter registration and voting?
If you think riots are "stupidly paranoid", then perhaps you'll enlighten us as to what OWS and the New Black Panthers have in store for America this summer?
You are a pathetic fool, even if you do know who Pauline Kael is/was. If Obozo does sail into his 2nd term, it will be fools like you who get kicked in the ass first. History happens!!!
Pelleas| 4.25.12 @ 1:51PM
Once again, ALL the pathetic neanderthal Tea-baggers know how to do is call people who oppose their neferious plans, names.. while having absolutely NO realistic solutions for--ANYTHING..
I HAVE NO IDEAS WHAT WILL HAPPEN, this summer.. but I am not cowering in my bunker, paranoid that there are "gonna be riots"-- this actually sounds like wish-ful thinking, on the part of the extreme right-wing goons, here.
"What fraud" (did Nixon commit...)?--Remember a little incident called..WATERGATE?.. and his "dirty tricks"?-nu?
It is so clear that you cave-men and women are so removed from any sort of reality, it is funny, and pathetic , at the same time
Occam's Tool| 4.25.12 @ 8:33PM
Ahhh, "Tea-Bagger" isn't a name? Push hard, Pelleas--- your head is stuck in a cramped, smelly orifice....
Ground Control| 4.26.12 @ 2:18AM
Calling people "names" is your stock and trade, P. "Pelleas" must be Latin for "Hypocrite."
Pelleas| 4.26.12 @ 5:41PM
I only use the type of words and name-calling that you cretins throw , first, as it seems to be the only language you understand or respond to...
The amount of racist/sexist name calling on this site-- totally UNPROVOCKED -- IS BREATH-TAKING- and yet.. when the same tone is thrownn back in your snouts, YOU DARE CRY "FOUL"-- ??--GIVE ME A FUKKING BREAK..!!
Ground Control| 4.26.12 @ 11:39PM
This is patently false. Name calling ALWAYS starts with you, and it almost always virulent, obscene, and baseless. You have never read anything racist in any of my posts. And yes, I cry "foul" because you are most foul.
Cpm| 4.25.12 @ 1:01PM
BTW-wasn't it REPUBLICAN Richard Nixon who was defeated in 1960 by voter FRAUD, particularly in Cook Co. Illinois?
Anthony| 4.25.12 @ 1:31PM
Quite right, not just Ill. but West VA. as well. Papa Joe had no moral qualms about stealing the election for his son, which is why Joe engaged "labor" and its "mob" bosses to insure the ballots were stuffed.
One of my favorite theories about the assassination of John Kennedy is that after he was elected, brother Bobby took on the same folks who stole the election for the Kennedys in the first place, the "mob" was none to enamoured with the "thanks" received at the hands of the Kennedys......
CarlH| 4.25.12 @ 10:52AM
Ted, income inequality is a Marxist idea and it is not a problem or anything that our government should try to fix or change. Our free market determines who is paid what amount, and our government should not try to redistribute or change the result of our free market with back door Marxist central planning. Income inequalty is as natural and proper as the difference in intelligence, difference in athletic ability, difference in looks, etc. It is life and reality. You are living in a Marxist utopia fairy tale if you think it is a problem or that our government should try to "fix it". By the way, Karl Marx was an idiot and he was wrong about everything that he every wrote or said.
Ted R.| 4.25.12 @ 11:17AM
The only "free" market is Hobbes' War of All Against All. The only "free" market is anarchy.
A capitalist economy requires rules, first and foremost the rule of law. These rules are drafted by political coordination, not by market forces. It is the privilege of all those living in democratic societies, that we all get an equal voice in the drafting of these rules.
There are lots of reasons to be concerned about equality. Inequality is not good for its own sake. All historical experience shows (if simple common sense is not enough to make you aware) that high levels of material inequality - inequality which is ALWAYS and everywhere a function of inequality of opportunity - is corrosive of free and independent societies.
No one has opportunities and accumulates wealth outside of society. When a person is successful, that is in significant part because the surrounding society has made an investment in that person's human capital; and they owe a share of their income back to the society, as society's return on investment. In a society with the right kind of political structure (which is not something which is the result of market forces, but instead of human values), the state can be organized in a way which maximally distributes opportunity. THAT is what WE are FOR, THAT is what YOU are AGAINST, and that is why, in the end, conservatives don't belong in a democracy. You even admit it! You even go around trying to claim we aren't a democracy! Insanity.
JP| 4.25.12 @ 2:10PM
TedR,
The kind of Progressive nonsense you speak of has been tried in Europe. And Europe is on the brink of insolvency. For 3 years Obama and the Dems forced these idea on the US. What do we have to show for the $5 trillion of income transfer he forced on this nation? 1.7% growth, and an economy teetering on the brink of insolvency.
Pelleas| 4.25.12 @ 6:33PM
"What do we have to show for the $5 trillion of income transfer he forced on this nation"
This one--of MANY- weird canards leveled against the current Administration, which is so totally out of wack, it is break-taking...
Did the current Administration inherit a National Debt of ..ZERO.. three and a half years ago, and sky-rocket it from 0 to 5 trill?
Regardless of the causes of the rising numbers, this PHONY nonsense has to stop- this current Presidency might have any number of problems that are troubling, BUT it did not CREATE this financial nightmare out of thin air, no?
Ground Control| 4.26.12 @ 2:19AM
Truth is no canard. You need help.
Pelleas| 4.26.12 @ 8:18PM
.....WHAT...."TRUTH".....?????
Pelleas| 4.25.12 @ 11:15AM
"Not on the evidence presented in this book, a semi-coherent critique of capitalism and a somewhat disjointed effort to explain...."
WELL..It is ONLY "semi-coherent and disjointed" if one chooses to disagree with the very well-written analysis that Frank offers in his latest book.
It surely isn't any more incoherent then much of what i read on this site.
Petronius| 4.25.12 @ 12:08PM
Frank hates the the concept of Liberty we aspire to and cherish: The Right to accumulate enough wealth to become laws unto ourselves as individuals. What was it Huey long used to say? "Every Man a King?"
The Franks want to confiscate and redistribute. We want to Earn it and Keep it! Who makes that impossible? Frank, Obama, and every statist controller going back to Wilson. And we want every last one of these PHD kindergarten teaching types out of our lives along with their strictures, diets, programs, social engineering, and Taxes. Make the elite intellectuals root hog, fail, and then die.
Cynicon Implant| 4.25.12 @ 12:53PM
The government pursued a policy that pushed mortgage lenders to give mortgages to the "less-qualified." The lenders were told "don't worry, the government will cover you," so the lenders went ahead and made the loans. Then a high percentage of those loans went bad when the "less-qualified" couldn't make the payments.
So the policy that the left came up with caused people who previously weren't able to own a home to become homeowners. And then not homeowners -- with a foreclosure on their records and less $ than they had before.
The policy pushed by the left disrupted the free market and caused millions to wreck their credit scores and become poorer. And now people like Frank refuse to acknowledge that they are responsible for making people poorer through their misguided policy. Their denial is truly a form of insanity.
shipley130| 4.25.12 @ 1:08PM
Why are liberals so eager to give people something for nothing? Is it a popularity contest? Is it a drug like effect on their brains when some squeals with delight about Obama Bucks?
kwan| 4.25.12 @ 1:25PM
This leftist propaganda meister is trying to sell the fantasy that it is preferable to live in a Totalitarian Socialist State because of the "fairness" and "equality" that is compassionately offered to the citizens. This deluded moron needs to be netted and transported to the closest looney bin before he hurts himself or others.
Citizen Jerry| 4.25.12 @ 1:56PM
Why is anyone surprised by the rise of constitutional conservatism under Obama? He grabbed America's steering wheel and made a hard left turn into socialism. The people fought back. Simple as that.
Stammon| 4.25.12 @ 3:02PM
I remember when "Red Lining" was the enemy of the day back in the 1980's. This is the result. To the leftists who deny this; You are only making people's lives worse.
Go to hell.
Dave Williams| 4.25.12 @ 4:20PM
Can I get a shout out there from anyone who is as happy as I am that Mumblemouth Bawney Fwank will NO LONGER be polluting the halls of Congress after Nov. 7, 2012?
Occam's Tool| 4.25.12 @ 8:33PM
Dave--of couse yes. And the Paulbot will go with him.
Mike 3/505| 4.25.12 @ 9:16PM
"...The Chambers review effectively insured that Ayn Rand, despite a small band of disciples that included Alan Greenspan, would never become a significant influence in the conservative movement..."
That would be humor correct?