Excuse my personal pique, but I find it endlessly exasperating that I wrote a book about this shit, published 13 years ago by the leading left house in the English-speaking world and now available everywhere for free download, yet my analysis has had almost no visible effect on left discourse.
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Oh, it's not just your personal pique.
I eagerly read _Wall Street_ and _After the New Economy_ years ago and still recommend them to friends and associates who have serious questions about the financial system. They're particularly strong medicine against black box obscurantism, 'let's get back on the gold standard' goofiness, Susie Ormand financial advice style jackassery and a host of other perceptual malfunctions.
Wall Street -
<http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/WSDownload.html>
After the new Economy -
<http://www.amazon.com/After-New-Economy-Doug-Henwood/dp/1565847709>
You've done such a entertainingly thorough job detailing the mechanics and politics of modern finance that you (and any one who read your books and took their method and information to heart) can't help but be annoyed when a left analyst -- who, by definition, should know better -- applies hand wavium to the topic.
At about the time the capital markets collapsed, ushering in the age of Cashpocalypse I was working for a large hedge funds management firm. Collateralized debt obligations, structured investment vehicles and several other clever monkey tricks were a normal part of my hectic day (sadly for my wallet, not as a funds manager, but on the super computing infrastructural end supporting f-mgr's money powered orbital flights). Yes of course, these things are complex but not unknowable.
Hell, even self-consciously cute and politically tepid programs such as Public Radio International's "This American Life" produced crisp explanations of the system's moving parts and key players.
"Giant Pool of Money"
<http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money>
"Another Frightening Show About the Economy"
When it comes to finance capital, in my experience, many individual leftists (I'm taking Carrol's advice and booting the jello soft, and really, not terribly useful phrase, "The Left" from my political lexicon) are very attracted to the moralizing and theoretical end of things and strangely repulsed by looks behind the curtain.
.d.