Experimental Blog #41

Comments on the books "The Greater Good" - How Philanthropy Drives the American Economy and Can Save Capitalism by Claire Gaudiani and "After the Fall - Saving Capitalism from Wall Street - and Washington" by Nicole Gelinas

The first book, written "before the fall" in 2003, is all about the history and necessity of the philanthropy of the wealthier Americans, and especially the most wealthy of them. This very American practice of giving to, endowing, and founding of hospitals, libraries, museums of many kinds, housing projects, universities, colleges and other schools of all kinds, advocacy organizations of any kind, and whatever else people thought of makes America what it is, and provides an example to the rest of the world.
Private funding seems to have almost always led the way in everything in America except for purely government functions, such as the military and prisons.
The whole history and ongoing process of American philanthropy, and that it must be continued, might be described as "Voluntary American Socialism."

"After the Fall" by Nicole Gelinas was written in 2009, and is all about the"meltdown" of the world's financial markets in 2008. The details and technical vocabulary are very difficult for an outsider to understand.
However, it seems possible that the government regulation of American industry and finance, that was largely constructed by the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt, effectively lasted about 50 years, but became irrelevant and ineffective during and soon after the presidency of Ronald Reagan, actually a few years before the downfall of all the Marxist-Socialist governments in Europe.
Near the end of the Reagan presidency the American government began a policy of "propping up", or saving failing American corporations, banks, and other financial institutions that were considered "too big to fail." This policy was continued by all succeeding administrations.
Meanwhile, Wall Street financial firms began "securitizing" and "tranching", that is classifying securities in order of risk and expected return, all kinds of debt and credit in as many ways as possible.
Among other things, all this "propping up" of banks and other financial firms that were considered "too big to fail," and "securitizing and tranching", and who knows what else led to the illusion of the absence of risk and the certainty of profits. Some financial executives took huge bonuses based on profits that had not yet been made, since they would save or make so much money for their companies, including firms that were receiving billions of dollars to "prop them up" from the federal government.
The author says that even Nobel laureates in mathematics were working for some of these firms, and were providing the complicated equations.
"Financial Armageddon" arrived in 2008, and so did one "panicky bailout" after another for financial firms considered "too big to fail". Nicole Gelinas writes that all of these "bailouts" are unpopular with the public, and that the public will eventually have its way.