At a moment when Bill Clinton is reframing his economic record as president -- before hes done hell have been the Great Equalizer -- in pursuit of a Hillary presidency in the era of Elizabeth Warren, Thomas Frank takes a look at his real 1990s legacy: the absolute adoration of Wall Street. Its good to remember just who Bill Clinton was at a moment when hes running as hard as he can to make the rest of us forget. Heres his conclusion. Tom Give the man his due. There was a tax increase on the rich in the first Clinton administration. Wages grew in the second Clinton administration, and that was a very good thing. It happened because unemployment was so low, however, not because unions had made a comeback or anything. Clinton also expanded the earned income tax credit, which is probably what he thinks of when he wants to recall what a friend he was to working people. But the overall feeling of the era was one of complete, unreserved adoration for Wall Street and money and the heroic boss. This was the age of CNBC’s CEO Wealth Meter, the years when the Nasdaq soared to 5,000, when you had all those investment books coming out — the Beardstown Ladies, Dow 36,000 — when you could follow the adventures of those awesome “day traders,” when you had “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire,” surely one of the most pungent moments in the long and reeking history of trash culture. Of course Clinton deregulated the banks — they were making us all rich! This kind of celebrationism was objectionable when Reagan was president, but under Clinton — this jolly man of the people — it looked different somehow. Those CEOs were just regular folks, working to make all of us richer, via our lovable pal the stock market! That’s what Clinton’s cultural function was — to make all this seem human. I called it market populism. Of course it turned out to be a bubble, and it ended in disaster. As did the housing boom, which got its start in the late ’90s, and as will the next bubble to come down the pike. Neoliberalism may be heaven on earth for the people on top, but for the rest of us it means insecurity and lifelong debt and a constant struggle to hang on to what our parents took for granted. Nice going, Bill. salon/2014/05/02/tom_frank_bill_clinton_was_so_not_down_with_thomas_piketty/
Posted on: Mon, 05 May 2014 12:52:14 +0000
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