Future conditional: The Nation counsels Washington on the financial crisis

The published material offers little in the way of explanation for this cascading crisis. Where Nation contributors have offered brief explanations, they have focused on deregulation as the root cause. Economist Joseph Stiglitz, for example, refers to the underlying causes of the problem: the spirit of excessive deregulation that the Bush Administration so promoted (A Better Bailout, Sept. 26). In fact, deregulation is itself a manifestation of a far deeper maladythe thoroughgoing and protracted rot of American capitalism, which has sought to offset its decline by turning to financial criminality, attacks on workers living conditions, and foreign wars of plunder.

The Nation expends considerably more effort in criticizing Paulsons proposals to bail out the entire financial industry. Some of this criticism hits the mark. William Greider, for example, correctly points out that Treasury Secretary Paulsons proposed bailout is an historic swindle (September 29). Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope, Greider writes. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their lossesmany hundreds of billions, maybe much more.

But the Nations editors recognize that the magazines fundamental task is to offer advice to the political class, and especially to the Democratic Party.

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