Sunday, May 26, 2002

The financial industry has always been anathema to populists. "Bankers all have hearts like caraway seeds" is one of the mildest populist pronouncements on the breed, and the pugnacious populist William Brann used to denounce life insurance companies as "vampire bats." [Molly Ivins] Molly closes her column with a quip about "that great populist, Wright Patman":  "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Instead of applying this rule to distant dictators, Patman applied it to wealthy and powerful Americans. ... Wealth too often opposes the public good in principle and practice. Do we look to Exxon for our national conscience?" We were reading Molly's column while simultaneously listening [Macro error: Can't call the script because the name "amazon" hasn't been defined.] to Radio Nation's Marc Cooper interview of Kevin Phillips about his most recent book, Wealth and Democracy.  It seemed to us to make a nice complement to Molly's pointed, if a bit folksy, ruminations on the same questions Phillips addresses.   10:33:23 AM