Harold Meyerson: A New New Deal

Reshaping the U.S. economy so that it actually benefits Americans won't be easy. But it must be done.

Harold Meyerson | March 21, 2008 | web only

The American Prospect is co-sponsoring the Roosevelt Institution's Toward a New New Deal Conference on April 9 in Washington, D.C.

Putting together everything we've learned over the past 10 days about high finance in Manhattan, one thing is clear: If Eliot Spitzer had saved all the money he apparently paid "Kristen" and her co-workers at the Emperors Club, he could have bought Bear Stearns.

Manhattan's culture of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous collapse has been on display in recent days as it has not since 1929. Now, as then, an edifice of shaky credit is toppling. Now, as then, what we took to be prosperity turns out to have been a bubble.