Sociological Perspectives

It was like eight nights of Chanukkah in one for me watching the Democratic debate last night. There was a Glass-Steagal lovefest going on. But here's the thing:  no one seems to get why Glass-Steagal was important or the connection between Glass-Steagal and the financial crisis.

Prior to the crash, only a very few macro-economists were studying consumer borrowing and fewer still were investigating inequality of income or of wealth as an important macro-economic factor. Work in macro-economics is done at academic institutions, the Fed, think tanks and government and private enterprises. Historically, very few PhD dissertations in macro-economics dealt with consumer finance or consumer spending or inequality issues.

Sometimes you can beat the door down with efforts to get Federal and State officials to tackle problems, but at the end of the day, locals can best get the job done, quietly and quickly.