Recommended - The Quiet Coup

I recommend Simon Johnson's article The Quiet Coup in the May, 2009 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Simon looks at America's current fiscal crisis the way the International Monetary Fund has looked at other similar (largely third world) crises. In third world countries, the Fund has learned that it can't really help until the ruling elites finally face up to the fact that some of them are going to have to lose money and power in any recovery scenario, and settle among themselves who will be the winners and who will be the losers.

American bankers, he argues, haven't yet come to this stage, and still hope that influence in Washington, and money from Washington, will keep all of them in power. Until we pass that stage, he argues, America's economy will not recover. An argument worth considering.