by KenThis comes of keeping nytimes.com at arm's length, owing to the NYT's totally understandable effort to realize some financial recompense for online consumption of its semi-expensively produced content: I have paid no attention to an online-only series, moderated by that sterling economist Joseph E.
You probably don't remember the Roaring Twenties. Conservative Republicans, corruption beyond anything ever seen in America and a haughty empowered plutocracy ruled America with an iron first. And brought on the Great Depression. FDR helped rebalance the American equation. A series of corporate-oriented presidents-- surrounded by a corporate-sponsored ruling elite-- has chipped away at almost everything FDR accomplished-- and they're working full speed to get whatever is left. Reagan, the Bushs, Clinton, Obama have all been dreadful presidents, among the worst in history.
In his searing and incisive book analyzing the Cheney presidency, Angler, Barton Gellman goes into how Cheney was able to neutralize his old crony, Fed Chair Alan Greenspan when he decided to cripple the American economy with a catastrophic tax cut for the wealthy, specifically designed to foster and accelerate economic inequality. They violated a principle that keeps a country's central banker independent of partisan politics.
