raghu wrote: > Volcker has been consistently progressive on financial reform issues > for a very long time.
What in heck does "progressive" mean, anyway? Bull-Moose Teddy Roosevelt? Fighting Bob LaFollette? the _Progressive_ magazine? the leftward half of the Democratic Party? Today's "progressive" ideas (like Obama's Mitt Romney plan for health care reform) are often to the right of yesterday's "progressive" ideas (Nixon's ideal health care reform), just as the Clinton Democrats were much the same as Eisenhower Republicans (as Clinton himself said), if that good. The word changes its meaning over time and with context. Without context, "progressive" means nothing. Raghu seems to be using the word "progressive" in the context of financial reform to mean "forcing the financiers to take the medicine" which will be good for them (as a group) in the long run even if it hurts their short-term interest. If so, Volcker is a "progressive." However, I wouldn't identify serving the long-term collective interest of the bankers with "progressive" in this way. If forced to define the always-ambiguous if not vacuous term, I'd say that "progressive" means in favor of empowering the working class and other dominated groups in society. (This definition, naturally enough, puts the term in the context of my values and world-view.) Helping the bankers may allow working people and other dominated groups to survive (since the financiers have the US and world economies in a hammerlock), but it doesn't empower them. Instead, people like Volcker have worked really hard to disempower the working class. Given the way Volcker and his ilk have worked hard to keep wages down and people disorganized, it looks like we're going to have continued stagnation of consumer demand in the US. If Volcker solves the bubble problem, where's demand going to come from? will the US turn into export-led economy, offering low unit labor costs as the main selling point? or will we see continuous wars? > And let's face it, today the worst enemy of the poor everywhere are > not the industrialists, the GMs and the Union Pacifics - not that > these corporations are saints, but they just aren't that powerful > anymore compared to JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. The big enemy is the > financial class. And anyone who takes them on should be considered a > progressive. Volcker doesn't "take on" the financial class. Instead, he's telling them what to do that's that will serve their own long-term self-interests. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
