and as I often point out, the country has been here before, although it seems to get worse every time it happens and no one in power has ever seemed able to catch a clue while their own cash flow is positive.

Reforms have only really happened when the whole thing has collapsed, otherwise they're the window dressing reforms that happened after a partial collapse like the one in 2008--half assed, half hearted, and overturned at the earliest possible moment.

I bought the book when it came out in 2008, so it was obviously written before the big financial collapse, and before Obama was elected. It happened to be on the shelf next to the book I was going to use -- which I can use some other day! -- and so I grabbed this instead. The quote is actually the third paragraph of the Preface! Phillips wrote an "Update" published in 2009, which I didn't know about until today, and I am seriously considering making it an early holiday gift to myself.

From the Kindle sample of the update:

Letting the merger and acquisitions process run wild and create mega-firms beyond effective national regulation but disposed to experiment and speculate hither and yon was disastrous. Allowing the financial sector to metastasize using $15 trillion of borrowed money over a quarter of a century was calamitous. So was permitting the derivatives and securitization business to create its $11 trillion of this and $53 trillion of that with the most incestuous and uncontrolled webs of distribution and counter-party relationships. And turning the core of the American dream, home ownership, into a trap for the rest of that dream staggers belief.

Kevin Phillips. Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism . Penguin Publishing Group.

I may need to get this update myself for Christmas

The wealthy donate to ensure their politicians pass laws to benefit them. I don't know how much longer this can continue, but I fear some kind of collapse is coming.

. . . .almost as long as I've been on DU.

It's scary. Very scary.