Ten Years On: What Have We Learned? What Have We Done? What Must We Do?

摘要

In a far-reaching summary of where we stand in America ten years after the speculative dramas of 2008, this law professor draws some significant conclusions about where to go from here. Ten years after the financial dramas of autumn 2008, it is a good time to take stock of what we have learned, what we have done, and what we have yet to do if we would avoid a repeat performance. The primary lessons to be drawn are that income and wealth distribution, the endogeneity of credit money, and finance system structure all matter profoundly, not only where justice but also financial and economic systemic stability are concerned. The longer-term tasks still before us include a much broader and financially engineered diffusion of capital ownership over our population, citizen central banking, a permanent national investment authority, continuous public open labor market operations, debt-free or low-debt education and health insurance, and an updated form of segregating capital-raising primary from asset-trading secondry markets in the financial sector. Shorter-term tasks include debt forgiveness, a restoration of labor rights and countercyclical progressive taxation, and restored citizen-ownership of our secondary market makers in home mortgage and higher education debt. These measures will restore the nation to its erstwhile status as a productive middle-class "yeoman republic" and, in so doing, will restore both justice and efficiency to our social and economic arrangements.