Today’s Must Read

Few knowledgeable people talk about the need for financial reform anymore, just a few short years after the financial crisis and collapse.

The right talks about getting tough on the weak and settling old scores, and the left is losing its way in obtuse gimmickry and quack economics that promote their own statist agendas. Pile enough rancid margarine on the bread and you won't see its thinness or the mold.

The broad center, independents, and progressives are largely silent, having averted one almost certain disastrous choice in the most recent national election, only to find themselves still on unsteady ground with a weak and wavering 'champion' who may once more betray their trust for his own interests, and the deal.

And yet this is not nearly our darkest hour. That may be yet to come.

All the reform that has occurred so far has been largely window-dressing. Financial and political corruption is a tax that the real economy cannot support or endure while remaining free.

Until there is substantial reform, there will be no sustainable recovery. This is only the appearance of recovery in the empire of illusion.

JESSE'S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN

If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup