This is an absolutely fascinating article about Joseph Stieglitz's new book.
http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/10/uchitelle-l.html
in my political economy class today, we debated social democracy and what was left to defend since the Democrats/Clinton/New Labor have so thoroughly capitulated on our basic tenets. we also debated what the hell those tenets were: decommodification of labor? wealth redistribution? regulating markets? Clark, in criticizing Dean for wanting to "reregulate" the economy, said the success of the Clinton years showed that balanced budgets and deregulation worked. i think that's a bunch of hooey and so does Stieglitz. I'm sorry this party has been taken over by the Rubin/Rivlin/Panetta/Sumners deficit hawks (and Dean in a way though lately he sounds like an FDR-Keynesian). The Steiglitz/Robert reich wing of the CLinton admininistration didn't have a prayer to really influence policy in traditional Democratic ways. instead, we focused on kissing the bond markets ass and deregulating energy, telecomm, agriculture and overturning Glass-Steagall (which i agree with Stieglize was idiotic and probably had a big hand in the bubble) and promoting free trade. now we wonder why manufacturing is gone and outsourcing of high tech is next? so Bush is right in some ways--he can blame the bad economy somewhat on his predecesor. Clark's comments really worried the hell out of me. Does he not realize the crisis capitalism here is in with corporate scandal after corporate scandal, much of which can be laid at the altar of "deregulation"? if our party can't be united on this and express outrage at how ordinary people are being shafted by big business given all that's happened, we really have no business running.