"Recall, for example, the famous essay by David Brooks published in The Atlantic in 2001, in which he declared that,
in one representative salt-of-the-earth Republican region, people had "no class resentment or class consciousness"; that complaints about the lopsided distribution of the economy's rewards were something one heard only from people in the wealthy and tasteful reaches of blue America.
Mr. Brooks's argument was powerful not so much because it captured reality, but because,
by suggesting that to care about economic inequality was itself an act of snobbery, it ingeniously short-circuited the entire debate. Egalitarianism begins at home, liberal!
The need for new compensation rules is most urgent at failed banks. This is not merely because is would make for good PR, but
because lavish executive bonuses sometimes create an incentive to hide losses, to take crazy risks, and even, according to Mr. Black, to "loot the place through seemingly normal corporate mechanisms." This is why, he continues, it is "essential to redesign and limit executive compensation when regulating failed or failing banks."
Our leaders may not know it yet, but this showdown between rival populisms is in fact a battle over political legitimacy. Is Wall Street the rightful master of our economic fate? Or should we choose a broader form of sovereignty?
Let the conservatives' hosannas turn to sneers. The market god has failed."