Steve Fraser: A Wall Street State of Mind

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 brought financial devastation to millions of Americans. Experts describe it as the most devastating financial event since the Great Depression. But was this event so frightening and devastating that it led to changes in the world of finance. The White House and Congress took steps to turn the economy around, but have done nothing meaningful to regulate the forces that caused it to prevent or marginalize the probability of another economic meltdown. One of the leading obstacles to regulatory change is the capitalists vehement opposition to government interference in private enterprise. The greatest obstacle, however, is praxeological, in the sense that Americans prefer wealth to poverty. And of course, who wouldnt prefer a life of wealth. The problem is that wealth is not achievable to all, no matter how hard one works toward this goal. So the goal should be a life of financial stability, and not wealth as a means of achieving the phantasmal American Dream. The culprit is the Wall Street state of mind. And Steve Frasers A Wall Street State of Mind tells it all. Fraser perfectly describes the mindset of the people who are directly responsible for the devastating meltdown that brought America to its economic knees. In his piece, Fraser writes a snippet of the Karl Marx adage on the ruling class that I fully quote here: The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class, which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas. Marxs aphorism remains as true today as it was then. It is central to the reason why our economic problems persist and is the reason why there is not a ready solution. Its the illusion of opulence, wealth that anyone can achieve, that drives the American psyche. You see, there is nothing characteristically or intrinsically different between Wall Street types and the rest of us. What drives Wall Street drives America. Americans look toward Wall Street for examples of how to achieve the illusive American Dream. And in that respect, nothing has changed. All the ingredients for another meltdown remain.