One can only hope
by Tom Sullivan
In his post-Greek referendum analysis, Howard Fineman sees echoes of the past:
It’s a new echo on a global scale of the politics of a much earlier, but in some ways remarkably similar, era in the U.S. As the U.S. became a continental economy in the late 19th century, with vast new hordes of wealth built in railroads, coal, electricity and communications, a political backlash arose. The new “money power” was judged too big and uncontrollable: an engine not of prosperity, but of inequality and corruption. The backlash launched America's Progressive movement, which among other reforms pushed laws to rein in the power of big corporations in the interests of ordinary people.
Now that the planet’s economies have essentially become one, and the world’s top dozen banks control $30 trillion in assets, the callous demands of a new and even larger “money power” is starting to spark a worldwide backlash.
The International Monetary Fund, writes Fineman, has become since its founding "something akin to a collection agency" for private banks. Still, it is not clear yet whether the backlash Fineman sees is real or apparent.
The corruption of democracy by this system (or perhaps the subjugation of democracy to it) is beginning to filter into the public consciousness. When TV stations in Georgia start doing investigations of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), opinion is beginning to move. The ugliness of this system is becoming ever more apparent to the public at large.