Turning pessimistic

Just finished 13 Bankers. Here is Niall Ferguson's comment:

"Too many discussions of the Great Recesssion present it as a purely economic phenomenon--the result of excessive leverage or errors of monetary policy or algorithms run mad. Simon Johnson was the first to point out that this was and is a crisis of political economy. His and James Kwak's analysis of the unholy intertwining of Washington and Wall Street--a cross between the Gilded Age and a banana republic--is essential reading."

I cannot read any more on this stuff. These guys have connected the dots as well as anyone I have found. So I'm off to other adventures and will sit back and see what the political process, always an ugly tug of war between various interests, does about this. I am not optimistic.

In retrospect, the last line of David Brooks column the other day maybe says it best: "Surely a country with this much going for it is not going to wait around passively and let a rotten political culture drag it down." But that is long run. Short run I do not see it happening. Obama would have to become Teddy Roosevelt.