Oligarchy Remains
Greenwald has asked the obvious, necessary question about our oligarchs, who were praised by Brooks here:
But beyond that, I’d love to know who has been running economic policy up until now if it wasn’t these Wise Men from Wall Street? When listing our New Economic Overlords, Brooks identifies the very people from both parties who have been running economic policy for the last decades — people like Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, former Treasury Secretaries Nicholas Brady and Robert Rubin, current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner of the New York Fed. If that is the New Wise Establishment who will save us, who exactly has been dictating economic policy before now?
Volcker hasn’t been running anything. Greenspan was the anti-Volcker. Volcker actually believed in fighting inflation and defending the currency. Volcker has been railing about the current situation for over a couple years now. No doubt, there is an oligarchy. Volcker isn’t in the center of it.
Agreed. Including Volcker is a distraction. I still think the rest of the argument holds up pretty well.