One percent’s anti-Piketty scheme: Its insane new plan to boost the rich (and raid the poor)

Just as the nation rallies behind the fight against inequality, Wall Street wants to pull off this audacious heist

David Dayen

It may not last, but for one brief moment yesterday, the country dodged a huge bullet. Members of both parties, and the entire White House economic team, have wanted for years to deliver a startling wealth transfer from the public to Wall Street, one that will almost certainly trigger homeowner abuse while making the largest financial institutions wildly rich. In other words, some of the same politicians who pay lip service to Thomas Piketty and the fight against rampant socioeconomic inequality wanted to pull off the greatest heist for the rich at the expense of the poor in decades. But at the last minute, they couldn’t get the support they needed in the Senate Banking Committee.