Web Letters: Return of the Wall Street Hustlers

I have heard a number of progressive thinkers issuing the same complaint about the new economic team, and am also concerned that we will have more of the same old rot in our financial system. But what I would like to see is a list of people who have the experience and ideas to fulfill a strong progressive package. Who are the new movers and thinkers on the progressive economic side? Not being an economist, I would like suggestions!

Charles Spink

Brooklyn, NY

While their hearts are in the right place, the problem with progressives is that they earnestly believe you can have a government actively and deeply involved in making decisions about all these industries without becoming dominated by big players of the industries. Of course a strong government will be dominated by the rich and powerful! How could it be any other way? Are the lowlifes of society going to get together and use all their power to direct things their way? I like to think that a libertarian is a progressive who has made this connection. For this reason, the small-government stance advocated by Ron Paul and others (although not the Republican Party at large) is to let companies rise and fall as they will, with the sole group having power over their fates being the whole corpus of consumers. Of course, certain activities would still be banned by law, such as fraud, theft and physical injury of others, but outside of that the free market would decide who wins and loses. If everyone held this simple view of the economy, we would no longer be faced with companies either coming to the government to ask for help, or installing their own in positions of power to ensure continued help at the expense of everyone else.

Matt Brandenburgh

Athens, GA

"Maybe Ralph Nader was right" and so was John Edwards. I just heard that giant sucking sound in stereo... Maybe Geithner, Summers and Volcker know where all the bodies are buried. Our scrappy senator has learned the political language of the corporate two-step. "This will be a diverse group"--really? He was worried about group think? These are the people who drew the map that got us here. We are out in the wilderness without food, water and gas.

JAMES PINETTE

Caribou, ME

Ralph Nader may have grown cantankerous with age and some of his comments reflect the bitterness of a prophet in exile, but his analysis of our political system has always been intelligent, clear-headed and dead-on accurate. The idea of Barack Obama as a progressive has always been ridiculous, but progressives fell for him like teenage girls swooning over the Jonas Brothers. So far his appointments have made a mockery of the idea of "change." As Pete Townsend wrote all those years ago, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

I placed an Obama yard sign on my front lawn, but I always knew that he would sell out the idea of progressive change and rally behind the interests of the elites. I supported him simply because the alternatives, McCain and Palin, were so much worse. I still have a stash of Nader 2000 buttons in my basement, and they remain the only political paraphenalia I've worn with pride. It's really quite sad that Obama reaches out to hawks like Hillary Clinton and the architects of our financial collapse like Rubin and Summers, but ignores a man like Ralph Nader who actually got it right!

Chuck Augello

Randolph, NJ