Started reading "The populist temptation" by Barry Eichengreen. First interesting point: not all economic crises are as likely to result in political swings to the extremes. Banking & financial crises are particularly bad in this respect, /
because they are seen to result from the actions of selfserving bankers (who are obviously not seen as part of the "people"), and often require bailouts by the state (which is then seen as profiteering). I guess there's some truth to this. /
One of the things that never ceases to amaze me on twitter is how many highly educated people don't seem to understand that bank bailouts are sometimes needed to avoid a bank run, and that bank runs would result in an economic collapse that would make the current crisis/
look like a picnic. (well, the Great Depression shows you what happens when you don't bail out banks). There's barely any discussion of whether state guarantees have ever resulted in any effective payouts by the state, or what was the return on taking a equity stake. /
(Of course, there's a real moral hazard problem linked to bailouts, which needs to be addressed, but most opinions voiced about bailouts don't reach that level of sophistication). Anyway, if even people who are themselves part of the intellectual elites are sincerely /
convinced that bank bailouts are only about serving pinstriped suits from ruin, I am not surprised that they cause so much rancour among the broader population. And it's not clear how better communication could solve it.
Trade protectionism combined with tax cuts for the rich is one of the policies that defines Trump's presidency. This is not liberal, neither in the European nor the American meaning of the word. But there are historical precedents of "conservatives" who have promoted trade /
protectionism to win the votes of the labour classes, such as Randolph Churchill & Joseph Chamberlain in late nineteenth century Britain. Just as Trump, Chamberlain saw import tariffs (erroneously) as a way to make foreigners pay (not for tax cuts for the rich, but for pensions)/
And, not surprisingly, he saw the Empire as "the manifest destiny of our race"
Chamberlain tended also to have a serious contempt for official statistics, and preferred his own, hm, "alternative facts". And, in the face of opposition from the party establishment, he appealed directly "to the people"
