Conservatives and Financial Reform

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Jonathan Chait remarks on the “intellectual disarray” in right wing circles concerning financial reform:

Conservatives do not know what to say or think about this. A few of them are calling for breaking up the big banks. A few more are following the Frank Luntz line that regulation is a big favor to Wall Street. But mostly they’re saying… nothing. It’s almost a non-issue at the National Review and Weekly Standard blogs.

This is something that’s been nagging at me lately too. Most of the blogs that spend a lot of time on regulatory reform are liberal or leftish blogs. Most of the books on the subject that aren’t pure journalistic efforts generally come at it from a lefty point of view too. Conservative bloggers, columnists, and talking heads just don’t seem to have an awful lot to say on the issue.

Why? They had plenty to say about healthcare reform, a similarly policy-heavy debate. And regulatory issues have long been a staple of the right. So why don’t conservatives have more to say about it? Jon proposes an answer:

You can see why the issue would pose problems for the right. First, it threatens the self-image they’ve developed over the last year as opponents of the government-business nexus. Second, it’s difficult to work out a free market response. If you let Wall Street invest however it likes, it will eventually precipitate a financial crisis, with massive government intervention being the only option to save the economy. Or else you can break up the big banks, or limit their ability to take on systemic risk. Either way, government has to get involved at some step in the process. It almost seems like conservatives can’t choose which form of government intervention to accept, so many of them just aren’t choosing.

Maybe. I don’t have a better answer, anyway. But it’s not really very compelling. In the past conservatives have always been able to marry their middle class NASCAR wing and their big business wing without much difficulty, and they’ve always been able to construct a free market response of some kind no matter what the issue is. It’s hard to believe that banking reform is really all that big a challenge for them.

One possibility, I suppose, is that this took them by surprise. On most subjects — healthcare, climate change, taxes, etc. — the right has a well honed arsenal of proposals. They may or may not make sense, but they’ve got ’em. Financial reform, conversely, is something they’ve never even thought about. For the past 30 years their only mantra has been to tear down regulation, and that’s pretty obviously a nonstarter right now. So they’ve got nothing.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate