South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Marshall Auerback of The Roosevelt Institute despairs over the “American train wreck” being caused by the failure of the political system.

The “two Americas” theme will continue. Stock market participants won’t be particularly disturbed by growing anger and hopelessness in the country because, by and large, all they care about are the markets and their bonus checks. The electorate’s increasing dissatisfaction will be a side show. They voted (at least some of them did) and now have to live with the consequences of that vote.
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Meanwhile, Obama will try to govern via more Clinton-style “triangulation” and “compromise” (although “compromise” is actually a charitable way of looking at it, since he has already capitulated to Wall Street). He wants to bring big business into his administration. Why? Business profits are sky-high. Contrary to the rhetoric, this has not been an administration that has been particularly “anti-business”. The administration’s instinct for solving a problem of fraud or criminality is to wish the problem away or “move forward” without any consequences for bad behavior.  But it is also a manifestation of our political system’s impotence to respond to the problems of long-term unemployment and a general hopelessness about the system’s ability to craft sensible long-term solutions to our longstanding structural problems.