PITY THE BILLIONAIRE (A Book Review)

One of the reasons I like blogging is the freedom one has in what gets to be posted. It can be serious or frivolous or anything in between. Posting a book report is a special pleasure for me.

“Before the Recession, people who had been cheated by bankers almost never took that occasion to demand that bankers be freed from “red tape” and the scrutiny of the law. Before 2009 the man in the breadline did not ordinarily weep for the man lounging on his yacht.”

When I read this quote from the introduction of the new book by Thomas Frank, titled “Pity the Billionaire,” my thought was: This I’ve got to read.

It is the story of the almost incredible manner in which people have been thought-herded, drenched in everything from old time religion to the wonders of Ayn Rand Objectivism and anything else that worked, to place them in the position advocating that the nation once more take the path that just recently robbed Americans of 16 trillion dollars, left the architects of the biggest ripoff ever to suffer no consequences and free to continue to do what they were doing before the financial meltdown took place in 2008. Free trade! Deregulate! Shrink the government! Kill the health plan, “Eliminate Medicare! Close down critical agencies! - all part of an adopted mantra that put a wrecking crew into Congress in 2010.

I wrote about this under the heading: “The Magnificent Propaganda Machine,” last year in an article titled “How We Got Here and Where We Are Headed,” (Posted here and Readwithoutinterruption.com). Frank has done a stellar job on the same subject, with the book appended with plenty of notes and references so the reader can look further into this important subject.

Frank gives neither Democrat nor Republican slack in this matter, as both parties contributed in one way or another to this amazing turn of events, in which it is apparent that no one learned anything. The appearance of Democrats giving up the tools of their trade to the far right Republicans working this mischief and watching those tools being used against them is pause for reflection.

Frank treats the Obama administration with scorn for having drawn in as advisers Wall Street people who were participants in and architects of the financial fiasco, and for rescuing financial houses with huge cash infusions. He laments that the model for reparations coming out of the Recession lay at least in part in Franklin Roosevelt’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Instead of rescuing the financial houses that brought about the 1929 financial collapse, the money went to a myriad of enterprises around the nation to help restart the economic engine.

Thomas Frank is author of “The Wrecking Crew,” “What’s the Matter with Kansas?,” and “One Market Under God.” He is a former opinion writer for the Wall Street Journal, Founding Editor of the “Baffler,” and a columnist for Harper’s.