From L.Uchitelle, NYTimes:

With the Democrats having won a majority in Congress, and disquiet over globalization growing, a party faction that has been powerless — the economic populists — is emerging and strongly promoting an alternative to Rubinomics.

The populists argue that the national income has flowed disproportionately into corporate coffers and the nation’s wealthiest households, and that the imbalance has grown worse in recent years. They want to rethink America’s role in the global economy. They would intervene in markets and regulate them much more than the Rubinites would. For a start, they would declare a moratorium on new trade agreements until clauses were included that would, for example, restrict layoffs and protect incomes.

But once "they" are labelled "populists" the policy debate is prejudiced against them. Once they are labelled 'regulators" they have to carry another albatross. Once they are designated as against free trade, still another burden must be borne.

It's hard enough just to be described as anti-Rubinite, when Secretary Rubin was the most successful at his job of anyone since Alexander Hamilton.

The problem is that the secret of Secretary Rubin's success was, as described in his own memoir, the combination of incisive analysis, flexible response, and constant focus on taking the risk out of complex situations. De-risking the American Dream now does not require an immediate leap to higher income taxes or sudden slashing of federal spending in order to obtain in an instant a balanced budget, as it did in 1993. Today it requires instead a restructuring of the economy to accomplish two goals: first, energy, the sine qua non of economic progress, should be home-grown and non-carbon emitting, and, second, the economy should see at least ten percent more businesses started every year than the current rate (about 600,000 out of the total of 6 million). Restructuring is the historical echo of populism, to be sure, but opposing free trade and disparaging other positive features of modern understanding of economics are not part of the necessary 21st century reiteration of 19th century populism. A profoundly different energy industry and a rapid expansion of firm creation, however, are the ways to respond to climate change and energy insecurity on the one hand and the rise of Chinese entrepreneurship on the other. (See "In China's Shadow.")

The necessary starting point for the essential restructuring is a break-up of the vertically and horizontally consolidated energy sector. The new structure should encourage start-up's from generation to distribution. It should use public finance, both locally and nationally, to promote new non-carbon sources and methods of energy conversion. It should depend upon market techniques, technological advance, and entrepreneurship to create a restructured energy sector and millions of new jobs in new firms in that sector. This is not inconsistent with the core principle of Rubinomics -- risk reduction coupled with private sector investment; yet it is also consistent with the overall thrust of any truly populist, or people-oriented, program, which is a different structure for the creation of a high and rising standard of living. Progressivism differs in that it emphasizes management by elites, typically composed of private-public sector allies; this is not what we need to tap the wellsprings of creative destruction that in turn will produce a structurally different and rapidly growing economy.