Results of Failure

I think William Greider is correct here:

Most Americans are not financial experts. It's very difficult, nearly impossible, for normal mortals to sort through the dense policy talk and conflicting opinions to figure out if the rhetoric of reform is real. Confusion is widespread in the land. Most Americans want to believe this president is leading us out of the swamp, but how can they know? I say, trust your gut feelings. They are as reliable as the learned experts.

Many Americans want to believe because they think that returning to "normal" means their decimated 401(k) accounts might somehow recover the 30-40 percent that disappeared during the past year. If it takes monster bank bailouts to restore stock-market prices, let's have bailouts.

This is why the administration will be able to do whatever they want and not have major public opposition, at least until it all fails to achieve anything. Then a populist candidate will arise with some weird panacea that won't work either, but at least it sounds good. That's how people like Mussolini and Hitler came to power in those very sensible and civilized European countries of Germany and Italy. It is not impossible here.

That is one of the reasons why what Obama does is so important, and why I'm critical of plans that don't do what he says he wants to do.