Great gulfs in the distribution of income and wealth. It was also known for extreme inequality. Crony capitalism of the kind that we are all too familiar with in our own times. When Mark Twain writes his first bestselling novel, “The Gilded Age,” that's what he's talking about. It was a corrupt age, profoundly politically corrupt. The first Gilded Age, like our own, was given over to very conspicuous displays of wealth. It gets that appellation because it is similar to what went on in the first Gilded Age. I think we are living in the second Gilded Age. It's become something of a cliché to say that we are living in the second Gilded Age. His earlier books include “Every Man a Speculator” and “Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace.” Steve Fraser, welcome. Steve Fraser is a time traveler – an editor, writer, and scholar of American history who shuttles among the centuries comparing our present to our past. It’s titled “The Age of Acquiescence” and will be published early next year. ![]() Which brings me to this new book on the Gilded Age then and now by the historian Steve Fraser. As one of the robber barons of the first Gilded Age exclaimed, "…we are the rich we own America we got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it…” It allows big donors to contribute up to one and a half million dollars to political party committees in a single election cycle. ![]() What’s more, Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress, again with a wink from the President, sealed the grip of plutocrats on our political process with yet another provision tucked away in the same bill. Lo and behold, the Citigroup language turns up in the final bill almost word for word. And guess what? That provision was drafted by lobbyists for the huge banking conglomerate Citigroup. They did it by slipping into the omnibus spending bill, signed this week by the President, a provision permitting Wall Street to resume the predatory practice of making risky bets with our deposits and sticking us the taxpayers with the bill if the gambles fail. We've just watched the Senate and the House, aided and abetted by President Obama, reward financial interests that poured almost half a billion dollars into the midterm elections. What happened in Washington over the past several days sent me back a century in time to the Gilded Age, when senators and representatives were owned by Wall Street and big business, and did the bidding of their monied masters by passing favorable laws that increased their already fabulous wealth.
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