Like the Wicked Witch of the West our economy has melted into a big pile of steaming goo.  And like Oz, there are good witches and bad witches;  there are good laws and bad laws, good economists and bad economists, good journalists and bad ones.

Today a feast of good wise ones are talking about the terrible disappointment of the hiring of Larry Summers who was one of the architects of the deregulation that  led to the economic meltdown.  Naomi Klein, Michael Hudson and Robert Kuttner join Amy Goodman in discussing Obama's choices for his economic team.

 Klein worries that this will be like Russia in that we created a kleptocracy decades ago and continue to help it survive.  Michael Hudson is worried that we will keep the oligarchs, the kleptocrats in power. Will the capital gains tax be raised or will it be only the income tax that gets raised? Will pumping money into the infrastructure and mass transit make these same aristocrats wealthy by  their owning the real estate that will be sold to make way for the new mass transit projects?  http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/25/naomi_klein_robert_kuttner_and_michael

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