Just a closing note, thinking on Domhoff lines. Many have brought up the vast difference in income-wealth in-equality into the discourse and done so in empirically demonstrable ways. In a mild critique, I think it is important to always explain what this means in terms of political power. In political power terms it means not just that I am struggling to survive on Social Security, while fat cats make out like bandits. In the power equation, it means that they get to make all the decisions, manage the discourse, and rule the institutions that direct the course of the society.
I have not finished LBO 129... So the point may be made there. I always read with a Domhoff power equation echoing in my brain. I read almost everything with that equation in mind. But I seriously doubt most people do this on instinct. I was vastly helped in performing this by being stuck in the working class, where I found despite every social and intellectual advantage, I could not escape.
Maybe it is not necessary for the LBO readership, like explaining dogs smell in the rain. (I like the smell, as well as kids in the rain---a kind of unmentioned beauty. Ever kiss your kid's rain wet face? Simple goodness.) Bankers, the quinessential capitalist elite show their most lurid and inhuman natures in economic crisis.
But I want to turn to the US middle class and its perception of itself as the backbone of America. This ideology and belief system needs a lot of serious empirical and theoretically analysis, i.e. deconstruction. The 40s-60s produced a broad spectrum of middle class wealth that was passed on to their children, mostly the boomers. Think of how that wealth was inherited and formed the basis of boomer prosperity in the post-70s. It was often a property transfer of the family house, bought in the 50s under public policies that favored GIs and other working class groups. A favor so to speak for fighting for the US of A.
Middle class status and its temporary growth was an inherited system of transfer, within which you could fall out, like I did. The excuse was moral failing, in my case as a failure of husband and father, roles I think I actually excelled, but in the general mind set of the 80s, was understood as a moral failing.
My credit rating was a moral failing? Yes, boys and girls. It actually mapped what a heel I was. If it didn't result in actual human suffering, it would be the source of comedy. I failed as a husband and father because my credit rating was too low... Not to be too crude dearest ex, bought her future with her pussy, seeking a better credit rating. You think I am bitter? There is even an inverse measure of dick to credit, bigger credit, shorter dick.
You think this is a joke? Just wait when your credit rating falls and see how you laugh as your hard on melts with the credit card balance. I mean, just understand how your credit rating is your moral-sexual compass. Is there not something seriously wrong here?
Geithner and Summers must barely clear their pubic hair... I am thinking two inches. Child baring by finger smear.
CG