What Clinton and Sanders Are Really Fighting About

[applegrove]

What Clinton and Sanders Are Really Fighting About

by K. Sabeel Rahman at the Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/the-allure-and-limits-of-managerialism/460146/

"SNIP...........

Clinton takes a managerialist view of how government works, embracing the idea that, with sufficient expertise, government can fine-tune the economy to prevent crises. Sanders, by contrast, is skeptical of expert oversight, and instead seeks to radically restructure the economy itself.

...........


This managerialist view of governance orients progressive policy towards a particular approach to economic regulation. First, it presumes that, by and large, the current economic structure is mostly working well, needing only some judicious fine-tuning to prevent crises or harmful effects. It also presupposes that the United States possesses sufficient regulatory capacity, expertise, and faith in its agencies to deliver on this kind of fine-tuned oversight.

But the experience of the last decade calls both of these assumptions into question. As viewers of Adam McKay’s and Michael Lewis’s The Big Short might notice, there is a very real question as to how much of the modern financial sector truly serves the economic needs of the public rather than manufacturing both profits and long-term risk. Simon Johnson and James Kwak, key voices arguing for more robust financial regulation since the crisis, have raised questions about how much and what kinds of financial innovation are actually beneficial for the economy. Meanwhile, despite their best efforts, financial regulators face a steep challenge in exercising the kind of public-spirited oversight envisioned by Clinton. As a number of recent studies suggest, even in the absence of literal corruption, good-faith regulators often skew policies to favor financial-sector interests as a result of the complexity of financial markets; regulatory dependence on financial firms themselves for information and data; and the shared social, cultural, and educational backgrounds of many financial regulators and financial-sector leaders.

Sanders’s approach to financial regulation, by contrast, rests on a theory of governance that takes these concerns seriously—something that the critique of Sanders’s specific policy positions often misses. His invocation of Glass-Steagall and push to break up banks are not naïve returns to a pre-modern form of financial regulation. Rather, they flow from skepticism toward the benefits of financial innovation and the capacity of regulators to be sufficiently independent to resist financial-sector influence. Sanders’s proposals represent a shift to a structuralist mode of governance, aiming to promote the public good by altering the fundamental dynamics of the market itself. If, as Sanders has argued, “fraud is the business model” and not just an exception on Wall Street, then there is no need to tiptoe around financial firms through minimalist fine-tuning. And if both the economic and political influence of the financial sector are problematic, then policies that depend less on managerial discretion and instead shift the dynamics of the market itself are preferable.

.........

The financial crisis has reignited the debate among progressives over how aggressively to regulate the modern financial sector. But it also reveals this underlying tension between different progressive visions of governance. Mainstream progressives have tended to take the same line as Clinton and Obama, emphasizing an approach to economic regulation that prioritizes pragmatic, expert oversight. By invoking a different progressive tradition that offers an alternative to both an overly optimistic faith in top-down technocracy, and to the scorched earth deregulatory zeal of conservatives, Sanders is shifting the terms of the debate. Progressives may share a desire to redress the problems of private power and economic inequality, but they will have to also address these questions about how best to accomplish those aims. By renewing an older progressive tradition in the spirit of Brandeis and the antitrusters of the first Gilded Age, Sanders has raised a challenge that progressives will have to grapple with, whatever the outcome of this race.

..............SNIP"

[Bread and Circus]

1. We tried the managerial route for 30+ years of the current economy....and....

it really really fucking sucks for a lot of people.

What is so hard to understand?

18 of the past 24 years have seen a Democratic President.

America is a 'misery factory' for at least tens, if not 100's, of millions of people, especially POC.

Any questions?

[applegrove]

2. The pendulum is definitely swinging back towards liberalism.

[Bonhomme Richard]

3. Complacency and the "that's just he way it is" attitude has become the norm....

all throughout our government. You can't change anything if you have already given up. A citizen groundswell for change is required to do anything. Things will not change until the players change.

[1StrongBlackMan]

4. Posted to for later. eom.

[Arugula Latte]

5. Personally I like the Rooseveltian model much, much better than the Clintonian

Third Way Appease-the-Corporations model.

[Arazi]

6. GWB our first MBA president. How did that work out? Eom

[Ferd Berfel]

7. It's abotu the Corporatist Oligarchy vs The People

and the People just won one..