Brett Stephens Joins Occupy

In today's column, veteran "principled" conservative Stephens bemoans the state of todays Capitalism and yearns for a return to the good old days. This was basically the complaint of Occupy, that Capital had skewed too far towards the 1% and needed some adjustment towards a kinder, more equal mode. Brett is considered a deep thinker, so this tells us a lot about the state of American exceptionalism. Exceptionally banal. Brett is reviewing a book he admires written by another intellectual who has given this a lot of thought. They think we should get back to "competitive capitalism", less government spending, less wild speculation, more responsibility.Remember, these people get paid big bucks to turn out this kind of sophomoric drivel. One never knows if they actually believe this stuff or if they are just required to crank out a "how to save capitalism from itself" article every couple of months. Along these same lines is an article published today titled: Dilemma on Wall Street describing the way climate risks are not being priced into the Markets. The argument is that financial markets can't seem to grasp long-term thinking, as with the last housing bubble and crash. But in fact the problem is much deeper. If the markets were to take seriously the "cost of carbon", it would mean the end of GDP growth. Investors would have to divest from not just fossil fuels but half the global economy. And that's just climate change. If they had to price in all ecological damage... yeah. Instead, the risks will be ignored until the collapse of the insurance industry and subsequent banking crisis, followed by collapse in financial markets. There are warnings. A group called Better Markets has issued a report called The Unseen Banking Crisis concealed Behind the Climate Crisis. But this report will be ignored, just like Brett's review.