Circling the Roundabout | Why We Got Ayn Rand Instead of FDR

Why We Got Ayn Rand Instead of FDR | Thomas Frank

In different times, TARP might have become the rallying point of a revitalized Left. After all, the bailouts were clearly of a piece with the misbehavior that had come before: the deregulation of the banks, the bonus culture, the wrecking of the supervisory state. Business-friendly conservatives had been behind each of these, and then business-friendly conservatives had knitted together the TARP for the same rotten reason: to give the bankers what ever they wanted. Reformers might have depicted the TARP as the final chapter in the great book of fraud, the episode in which Wall Street used the captured state to transfer its debts to the public.

But it was the Right that grabbed the opportunity to define the debate, using bailouts to shift the burden of villainy from Wall Street to government. For them, the TARP was the only part of the crisis story that mattered— not the derivatives or the deregulation— and its conservative-Republican parentage made no difference. (That congressional Democrats voted for it, on the other hand, was deeply meaningful.) They were the sole rightful opponents of the TARP, conservatives insisted, because they opposed federal interventions in the market, and bailouts violated strict laissez-faire orthodoxy—their orthodoxy. Bailouts allowed government to decide who won and lost; they replaced the forces of competition with those of administrative fiat; and they puffed up the deficit, to boot. And so the Right staked its claim, making the TARP into the outrage that lifted a thousand snake flags.

(Source: theamericanbear)