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Adam Kotsko on the financial crisis:

At the same time, I am going to advance a radical proposition: the ultimate fault lies not with [the evil people in the big banks], but with the US government. That’s because the government lays down the ground rules. Within those rules, these businessmen sought the maximum possible short-term profit — both for their firms and for themselves personally. That is what they’re supposed to do. The government’s job is to set limits to the pursuit of profit so that they can’t act in such a way as to destroy the entire economy. The government did not do that. Therefore, it’s the government’s fault that the economy is presently in the toilet and — more importantly — the solution is not to get a few troubled firms over the hump to “go back to normal,” but to completely reconfigure the way the state shapes the economy.

I think Kotsko is basically right. I forget who said this, but behind all of the populist resentment toward the financier class always lies a little hint of anti-Semitism. This isn’t meant to exonerate the financier class, but as Marx pointed out, during periods of crisis it’s always much easier to blame them since their role is to convert money into more money (M-M’). But in reality this is the whole point of the entire capitalist economy, regardless of whether one is generating surplus-value through derivatives and speculation alone (M-M’) or the production of computers and cellphones (M-C-M’). In the case of the latter, the production of commodities just obfuscates the real intention.