Huckabee contra the inequities and inequalities of the financial services industry; is Huckabee sending signals to the Romneys?

October 10, 2007 in 2008, analysis, argument, campaign literature, election, election 2008, GOP, mitt romney, republicans, romney
Tags: debate, economy, equity-sector, eyeon2008.com, finance, financial services, Huckabee, labour, NYT, team romney, unions

“Does Mike Huckabee think that the financial services industry is today’s robber barrons? Is he right? Certainly in a post-industrial economy, there’s an analogy between railroads and financial services, even if it is somewhat strained,” asks the eye of the influential and precise eyeon2008.com in a post titled Huckabee against the robber barrons?

I contrast this with John Edwards. He targets the rich. Huckabee may be targeting Wall Street. That’s a difference. Perhaps an important one. What would Huckabee have to say about the housing crisis? … more

An interesting question to be sure—some sort of redacted, reconstructed populism seems to be forming itself on the margins of the center-right. BUT: Here is a question that interests us more: who among the GOP candidates springs super-rich from the financial services industry like a venus on the half-shell?—like Athena, fully formed, from the forehead of Zeus, not because of hard work or native genius, but because of an opportunity offered him by a mentor?—answer: Willard Milton Romney formerly of Bain Capital. We have harped upon this string for weeks. See:

Romney’s millions—more on the equity-sector candidate from the NYT

Is it possible—we ask, just possible—that Huckabee is sending a signal to Team Romney and his equity sector and banking industry constituencies?—if so, Huckabee needs to be clearer, plainer, and probably a lot more direct. Team Romney is not known for its subtlety or intellectual rigour.

yours &c.
dr. g.d.

P.S. Not since the temple-based, central-storage economies of absolute antiquity—urban concentrations like Sumer, Akkad etc.—has there existed a social and material order the primary basis of which was not production, consumption, and trade, but hoarding and redistribution from a central site or sites. Post-capitalism—with its gigantic pension funds and other vast pools of spare money—seems to be taking us back to the future.

Does anyone remember the story of Joseph and the power that accrued to Pharaoh as he appropriated all the productive instruments of land and labour in exchange for the contents of his granaries?

Our laws and institutions have yet to adapt to the new regime of non-capital and its non-capitalists. It is from this new regime that Romney springs; see: Romney and private equity: the new ruling class. The first historical test of the new regime, already unfolding all around us—as eyeon2008.com intuits—is the so-called housing crisis, which is but the surface irritation of a global crisis of liquidity. See:

world financial system in crisis; Romney, who made his fortune in the equity sector, has nothing to say

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