This populist reasoning roused in support of the bank tax and repeated again in the SOTU speech last night is annoying, galling even, no? I don't necessarily disagree with elements of the bank tax or with certain aspects of it that may prove sensible, but this populist bullshit that fat cat bankers should be made to payback the honest taxpayers who bailed them out is nonsense - one, the way Obama is touting the tax suggests its main purpose is to continue an anti-big business scapegoating of bankers and I don't see how that's good for the economy; and two, the money will not be going to pay down in any substantial way some nebulous debt owed the taxpayer but rather is just a shake down of big money that at best puts a small dent in the fiscal profligacy of a liberal agenda, the real culprit here [well, that's to overstate things a bit, but Obama has been spouting anti-big business, anti-rich 'special interests' since he came to office as if the public and the gov't had nothing at all to do with the financial crisis and I think in a deep recession where confidence in the business environment is shot, where major newspapers are running headlines that ask 'is this the end of capitalism?', I think to throw oil on that fire is/was utterly foolish - as well I think that an anti-business, pro-gov't intervention prejudice inspired the muddled incoherence of the stimulus package, a misbegotten bastard child that right from the get go contributed to the perception, among taxpayers and the business community, that the system was coming undone - and then the blind arrogance of throwing a monstrous and monstrously expensive health care reform bill on top of that? - yeah, I don't think it's out of line to say the profligacy of a liberal agenda is much more of a problem here than fat cat bankers - which of course is not to suggest there wasn't a serious breakdown in the business model - I'm just saying the liberal approach to a correction has often done more harm than good].
[update: in keeping with a delusional conceit of mine that imagines myself as being out in front of things in general WSJ publishes op-ed basically making same point as me, that this populist cage rattling over big money is shallow, disingenuous and counter-productive - writer alluding to FDR who she claims tried the same myopic tactic in the 30s only to watch business continue to lie dormant with big money sitting on the sidelines, at least until WWII came along to scare everyone straight - don't know how true that is]
