We know Rove lost in Ohio. Now, economist Simon Johnson is saying, Rove is going to lose his battle with Elizabeth Warren.
Americans for Prosperity has sunk some bucks into a political ad condemning Senate candidate Warren. “This ad is not a big surprise,” Johnson writes, ” but the line that Mr. Rove takes could well backfire.”
Mr. Rove is opening the blame game and this is going to go badly for his presumed supporters – the largest banks on Wall Street that took excessive risks, paid their top people well, and then blew themselves up at great cost to the American taxpayer. By all means, let us have a conversation about jobs and the history of job losses in the United States; “too big to fail” banks do not look good in this context.
What are the banks up to these days?
The biggest financial firms have become even larger since the crisis. Their ability to take risk is essentially unfettered. Attempts to roll-back their power have largely been rebuffed. The European crisis now threatens to overcome some of the largest, precisely because they resisted efforts to make them build up larger buffers against losses (shareholder equity). How is this conducive to job creation in any sustained manner?
Same old, same old. Most Americans are well aware of this. Surely the people of Massachusetts who plan to vote next year know all about this, too, just as the people of Ohio knew about John Kasich and the Republican party’s attempt to deprive, diss, and demote the people who work for government and community. Massachusetts people are just as well informed and awake as Ohioans are. They know about “too big to fail,” and they know the banks are still trying to put one over on us. All Rove is doing is to remind them of the bad times.
At the end of the day, the voters of Massachusetts will decide. Do they believe in the radical – in fact, ludicrous and manifestly disproven – theory that “too big to fail” banks will generate good jobs for all? Or do they think that such banks, left to their own devices, will plunge us into another crisis, just as profound as what the Europeans are now going through?
If Mr. Rove directs their attention along these lines, that would be helpful.
Cross posted from the blog Prairie Weather.
Photo via Shutterstock.com
