You can see how the opportunities for outrage are going to be endless. ZOMG! Citibank is installing a SUB-ZERO fridge in their new executive suites! How fucking DARE they? What arrogance!
I shouldn’t even bother writing about this stuff, but faux populism is nothing but demagoguery (have you noticed how the Republicans are all jumping on board now?) and will result in the same horrible mistakes in policymaking that THE FEAR did when it was used by the Bush administration.
Don’t let yourself get yanked around on a chain. I’m for a lot of populist legislation, including a much higher marginal income tax rate on the rich, new robust financial regulation, breaking up the big banks and financial services institutions and keeping them separate, and a huge estate tax hike, for starters. I’d love to see Obama go all Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt on Wall Street’s ass. And I am all for throwing people in prison if they committed fraud or other crimes. But let’s stop acting like imbeciles about the TARP funds and how companies are spending it. If we don’t stop acting like Pavlov’s dogs everytime some TARP-fed corporation has an office party, we’ll effectively cripple the first decent administration we’ve had in fifty years.
Use your heads.