The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in AmericaA New York Times bestseller The Great Deformation is a searing look at Washington's craven response to the recent myriad of financial crises and fiscal cliffs. It counters conventional wisdom with an eighty-year revisionist history of how the American state -- especially the Federal Reserve -- has fallen prey to the politics of crony capitalism and the ideologies of fiscal stimulus, monetary central planning, and financial bailouts. These forces have left the public sector teetering on the edge of political dysfunction and fiscal collapse and have caused America's private enterprise foundation to morph into a speculative casino that swindles the masses and enriches the few. Defying right- and left-wing boxes, David Stockman provides a catalogue of corrupters and defenders of sound money, fiscal rectitude, and free markets. The former includes Franklin Roosevelt, who fathered crony capitalism; Richard Nixon, who destroyed national financial discipline and the Bretton Woods gold-backed dollar; Fed chairmen Greenspan and Bernanke, who fostered our present scourge of bubble finance and addiction to debt and speculation; George W. Bush, who repudiated fiscal rectitude and ballooned the warfare state via senseless wars; and Barack Obama, who revived failed Keynesian "borrow and spend" policies that have driven the national debt to perilous heights. By contrast, the book also traces a parade of statesmen who championed balanced budgets and financial market discipline including Carter Glass, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Simon, Paul Volcker, Bill Clinton, and Sheila Bair. Stockman's analysis skewers Keynesian spenders and GOP tax-cutters alike, showing how they converged to bloat the welfare state, perpetuate the military-industrial complex, and deplete the revenue base -- even as the Fed's massive money printing allowed politicians to enjoy "deficits without tears." But these policies have also fueled new financial bubbles and favored Wall Street with cheap money and rigged stock and bond markets, while crushing Main Street savers and punishing family budgets with soaring food and energy costs. The Great Deformation explains how we got here and why these warped, crony capitalist policies are an epochal threat to free market prosperity and American political democracy. |
Contents
Days of Crony Capitalist Plunder | |
PART II | |
How the Budget Battle Was Lost | |
How the GOP AntiTax Religion Was Born | |
The Nixon Abomination | |
How the Fed Brought the Gambling Mania to Americas Neighborhoods | |
The Great Financial Engineering Binge | |
The Great Raid on Corporate Cash | |
How the Fed Got Cramerd | |
When Giant LBOs StripMined the Land | |
Rise of the Debt Zombies | |
Bonfires of Debt and the Road Not Taken | |
PART V | |
New Deal Myths of Recovery | |
Crony Capitalism and Fiscal Demise | |
War Finance and the Twilight of Sound Money | |
Eisenhowers Defense Minimum and the Last Age of Fiscal Rectitude | |
The American Empire and the End of Sound Money | |
Rise of the TBill Standard | |
Pork Bellies Floating Money and the Rise of Speculative Finance | |
Greenspan 2 0 | |
Bull Market Culture and the Delusion of Quick Riches | |
Serial Bubbles | |
How Wall Street Got Huge | |
Roots of the Great Housing Deformation | |
Willard M Romney and the Truman Show of Bubble Finance | |
Bernankes False Depression Call and the 800 Billion Obama Stimulus | |
Crony Capitalist Larceny | |
The Rampages of Crony Capitalism in the Auto Belt | |
No Recovery on Main Street | |
Last Gift to the 1 Percent | |
The StateWreck Ahead | |
Another Road That Could Be Taken | |
Note on Sources | |
Other editions - View all
The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America David Stockman No preview available - 2014 |
The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America David Stockman No preview available - 2013 |
Common terms and phrases
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