There is not the same urgency to resuscitate and reform the system as there was in the 30's, because the the economic and political crisis, while provoking great anxiety, has to date not been as severe as the Great Depression, and the capitalists are still hoping to somehow muddle through.
If official unemployment rises to 25% from 9%, if 50% rather than less than 1% of banks fail, if the economy contracts by 25% after recovering from a less than 5% fall, if prices drop by 25% rather than remaining stable, if the stock market falls by 90%, if there is a wave of bankruptcies by today's cash-rich corporations, if a resulting movement of the unemployed and an organized anticapitalist left begin to grow, etc. etc., then you will have the material base for more radical action by the system to save itself.
^^^^^ CB: A very good comparison demonstrating very well why Obama didn't have the "material base" that FDR did to get a new New Deal through.
Not only that Keynesianism is not the exact science that Krugman and LBO'ers portray it as. There could have been double the Stimulus there was in 2009 , and it might not have avoided the big recession and current high unemployment rate. You think we didn't notice that economists, professional and aficionados don't know how to keep capitalism out of recessions and crises ? Only Dean Baker predicted the financial crash. Everybody on PEN-L was timid about talking about a coming crisis in the years before 2008 because Doug would chastise anybody who said anything bad about the economy. I sat right there and watched it all. Check out the PEN-L archives in the years before 2008.
PEN-L cribbed Henwood into its own silence.