Trump Imitates Putinism

Popular Economics Weekly

“Russian mathematician and Putin critic Andrey Piontkovsky characterized Putinism as "the highest and final stage of bandit capitalism in Russia; and also as a war, 'consolidation' of the nation on the ground of hatred against some ethnic group, attack on freedom of speech and information brainwashing, isolation from the outside world and further economic degradation". Wikipedia

Medium.com

The latest Ukrainian peace proposal was negotiated between President Trump and Vladimir Putin without Ukraine’s involvement. This is another example of Donald Trump’s attempt to curry favor with Vladimir Putin by literally allowing Putin to dictate the terms of the peace proposal.

Why has Trump turned into Putin’s messenger, whose policies mirror Putinism? Why has the oldest liberal democracy in the world, a nation of immigrants founded on the principle of every member’s inalienable right to be free become the “bandit capitalism” of Vladimir Putin, a dictator who allows no freedoms and kills his own people?

Late-stage capitalism doesn’t fully explain why Donald Trump, a real estate developer with no political experience, could convert a weakened American Democracy into a version of capitalism that concentrates power and wealth in the hands of his oligarchic supporters blatantly ignoring America’s founding principles and laws of the land.

But epidemiologic disease models studied by medical researchers can explain how capitalism could morph into Putinism and bandit capitalism. Such models have shown that there are predictable paths that all epidemics, pandemics, or other contagious disease outbreaks follow from beginning to end.

The body politic of countries and regions (i.e., “the people of a nation, state, or society considered collectively as an organized group of citizens) have endured political outbreaks with similar characteristics. Even civil wars fit this infectious disease model, because they originate internally—brother or sister against each other—and may last longer than years, and suddenly end in unexpected ways.

How do diseases infect? The Black Plague epidemics usually infected people that had been weakened by famines or dysfunctional governments, and the more recent Spanish Flu and COVID-19 pandemics as well that infected and killed millions.

When do such pandemics wane or disappear? They run a recognizable course from inception to a maximum infection rate, then subsided when disease-infected populations eventually found ways to cause their decline. It was quarantines in early times, and vaccines in modern times.

Trumpism, Putinism, and like autocracies or dictatorships have captured weakened political systems. In Russia it was breakup of communism and the Soviet Empire that fostered a Vladimir Putin. In Trump’s case, he took advantage of a democratizing order that had united to win World War II but no longer served many Americans.

Oligarchism, or the Gilded Age model has supported Trump’s version of bandit capitalism with his illegal tariffs that are creating the worst income inequality in the developed world. Trump is promoting a similar hatred of immigrants as Putin, also non-white ethnic and religious groups, attacks on freedom of speech in universities, and Depression-level tariffs that is isolating America from the “outer world”.

The AP just reported that President Donald Trump says he wants to “permanently pause migration” from poorer nations and is promising to seek to expel millions of immigrants from the United States by revoking their legal status. He is blaming immigrants for problems from crime to housing shortages as part of “social dysfunction” in America and demanding “REVERSE MIGRATION.”

He has also followed Putin’s strategy by weakening foreign alliances such as NATO, and breaking up long held foreign trade alliances, all to centralize his power.

But the MAGA movement itself may be in a late-stage decline, as it is slowly disintegrating from internal divisions, with the resignation of major leaders such as Marjorie Taylor Green, growing disputes over policies including tariffs and the treatment of immigrants.

And Donald Trump, its leader, is showing signs of declining health—with fewer public appearances (that also afflicted former president Biden), irrational outbursts and making sudden policy changes without explanation. The MAGA movement has blindly followed him, believing in totally irrational conspiracies until the conspiracies are debunked or and fade away (just as did the flu and COVID-19 pandemics).

The first Gilded Age was defeated by the election of President Teddy Roosevelt riding on the wave of a progressive movement that uncovered the corruption and concentrated wealth of the time.

Trump doesn’t even attempt to hide his blatant corruption nor his promotion of the disease of Putinism that is attempting to destroy American Democracy. So it will take constant vigilance to identify and combat such a widespread contagion, as we have defeated past diseases of the 'body politic', and bring Americans together once again in common purpose to preserve our democracy.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

 

Where is Robin Hood?

 

Financial FAQs

“List and hearken, gentlemen,

That be of free-born blood,

I shall you tell of a good yeoman,

His name was Robin Hood.”

 

FRED%gdp

Where is a modern Robin Hood when we need him or her, someone who can stop ‘King’ Trump from robbing the poor as the evil King John pillaged his people in medieval times? One legend says it wasn’t until the return of Richard the Lionhearted from the Crusades who usurped King John and brought justice back to the people of his kingdom.

King John impoverished his subjects with prohibitive taxes to support himself and his noblemen, just as ‘King’ Trump is levying excessive tariffs to pay for the tax cuts that are enriching himself, his oligarchs, and ballooning our national debt.

The massive public debt that Trump and his Republicans have deemed a national emergency is really of their own creation; tax cuts that weren’t paid for by successive Republican administrations.

The FRED graph shows the large jump in debt to 120 percent of GDP from successive Republican administrations since 1980 (Reagan), 2000 (GW Bush) and 2016 (Trump I). Gray bars are recessions.

It was the beginning of the domination of big business and globalization of whole industries, as well as the suppression of working Americans’ rights with the breaking up of the labor unions.

It was the very same tax cuts and deregulation that either ignored the laws or evaded them that Republicans have done since Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down schemes in 1980 that gave us the first real national debt ($400 million).

GW Bush continued the tax cuts which added the first $1 billion deficit, President Trump added another $5 billion in debt during his first term and is adding another $4-$5 billion in his just passed big ‘beautiful’ tax cut bill.

Teddy Roosevelt was the first Robin Hood in modern times to root out the Robber Barons of the First Gilded Age by busting their monopolies and prosecuting the lawbreakers. It initiated the Progressive Era that led to FDR’s New Deal for the American people.

The only dip in debt (as percentage of GDP) portrayed in the graph was the Clinton Democratic administration’s four budget surpluses (1996-2000) that would have practically abolished the debt altogether if GW Bush and his Republicans had not pushed through two more tax cut bills that weren’t paid for.

This has resulted in at least a $2 trillion transfer in wealth from working class folk that has enriched Big Business and corporate CEOS immeasurably since 1980. Their huge wealth and support made another Trump administration possible.

It’s time for Democrats to find their own Robin Hood who can reverse the theft in the courts and win elections by exposing Trump’s Oligarchs for what they are, Robber Barons.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Is This Another Upswing?

 Answering Kennedy’s Call

Something is going on in the American culture and psyche, a change that I believe will return us to a more optimistic era of hope and possibilities.

I see what Pulitzer prize-winner and Political Scientist Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone) and co-author Shaylyn Romney Garrett describe in their new book, The Upswing; How America Came Together a Century Ago and How WE Can Do It Again, as a return to a more progressive “We” era, a societal coming together with less divisiveness than we have experienced in recent decades.

Simon&Shuster

“Americans Hate Divisiveness, We Need to Demand More,” is the headline of a recent PEW Research poll, in which: “57 percent of Americans believe that partisan conflicts receive too much attention these days. And 78 percent say there is too little focus on important issues facing the country. But if we want something different in the political dialogue, we the people need to demand it by rejecting divisive rhetoric and rewarding substance and solutions.”

I have called recent decades the Age of Narcissism. It was a time when “what’s in it for me” topped “what’s in it for us.”

Putnam and Garrett describe American history over the past 125 years with the “I-We-I” curve, using a series of bell-shaped curves to evidence the history of “a gradual climb into greater interdependence and cooperation, followed by a steep descent into greater independence and egoism.”

There is mounting evidence we have begun such a change that resembles earlier, more progressive eras. Putnam and Garrett have called it “The Upswing”, a return to the “We” era that we last experienced in the 1960s, before the Vietnam War and killings of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr., tore our country apart in a de facto civil war of red states vs. blue states.

The Kennedys and MLK, Jr. were the upholders of the last “We” era before we descended into our dark ages, accompanied by a greater lawlessness and distrust of our laws and institutions.

The sixties was the decade of greater voting and civil rights, income equality, and equal opportunities in education and the workplace with the enactment of anti-discrimination laws.

I came of age when President Kennedy promised a New Frontier of peace and end to the cold war that I also believed would happen after listening to him as a student and then volunteering for the Peace Corps. Kennedy instilled a ‘can do’ spirit that anything and everything was possible when he said there were better ways to serve the country than war: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Sarge Shriver, the Peace Corps first director, then adopted Rotary’s motto for PC Volunteers, “Service Above Self.”

The descent into darkness was also a time when many Americans were in the throes of “Deaths of Despair…” said Nobel Prize-winner Angus Deaton and Anne Case, who uncovered the damage done by drug use and suicides among the rust-belt workers who had lost their industrial age jobs.

Maybe the change from the darkness to light was first noticeable during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the weaknesses of excessive individualism became evident in the partisan divide over the treatment of its victims—when literal survival required cooperation over competition, regardless of the politics or religion.

Positive changes also occurred with modern technologies such as the Internet that enabled Americans to talk to each other more freely. This may sound counter-intuitive with the ‘anything goes’ frontier mentality of its abusers and propagandists, but it has enabled the younger generations to be seen and heard much more than older generations.

Pollsters have seen the changes in our younger generations towards more communality. They are the Internet generations that communicate and get their news via cell phones and laptops, are more ethnically diverse, and less intolerant.

PEW reported in 2020, “Generation Z represents the leading edge of the country’s changing racial and ethnic makeup. A bare majority (52%) are non-Hispanic white – significantly smaller than the share of Millennials who were non-Hispanic white in 2002 (61%). One-in-four Gen Zers are Hispanic, 14% are black, 6% are Asian and 5% are some other race or two or more races.”

The earliest era of great change described by Putnam and Garrett was when citizens and parties come closer together in the turn of the last century, the Progressive era, which gained full force when Vice President Teddy Roosevelt became the President with the assassination of William McKinley in 1901.

“The Progressive movement did not eliminate polarization, to be sure, but in reflecting reformist, egalitarian, and even communitarian sentiments among leaders of both major parties, it laid the groundwork for decades of declining polarization,” they said.

There is something else bringing people together, much of it involuntary—the growing threat of climate change. The overheating and droughts in major regions of planet Earth have caused massive migrations from areas of famine and overpopulation that is creating a more global population mix.

There’s a consequent backlash that is creating anti-immigrant policies such as Brexit, but it is being countered with the so-called DEI policies (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies created by progressives that increase egalitarianism, which is another way of saying it means to reduce the record wealth and income inequality fostered during the dark ages.

It will require more egalitarianism among developed countries with labor shortages such as the U.S. as we become even more ethnically and racially diverse. We have no choice but to welcome immigrants to maintain economic growth.

In fact, we see it already happening with the younger generations.

“A recent online survey found that younger generations are more optimistic than older generations about becoming wealthy in the future.  Fully 69 percent of Gen Zers and 54 percent of millennials who don’t consider themselves wealthy now said that they think that they will be wealthy someday, a survey by Lending Tree revealed, as opposed to 41 percent overall. The survey, conducted by Question Pro in early September was taken by 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 77.”

I have listed just a few of the changes for good that are coming. It’s happened in the past and WE are doing it again!

Harlan Green © 2024

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Equality Is Good For Everyone!

Popular Economics Weekly

It looks like some states are beginning to take the equality issue seriously again. Massachusetts just raised their minimum wage to $10 per hour, California is raising it to $8.25 over 2 years, with New Jersey and other states to follow.

And just last week, the Center for American Progress launched the Washington Center For Equitable Growth, which aims to deepen the economic critique of inequality. It is being set up by Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, among others, who is known with his partner Thomas Piketty, as the first economists to historically research the history of income distribution over the past 100 years.

Their results show that we have the worst income distribution in the developed world; as bad as in 1929 that resulted in the Great Depression. Such inequality was again the case in the run-up to the Great Recession.

It was declining household incomes that led the Bush administration and Federal Reserve to create the housing bubble. It used very easy credit conditions and lax loan qualification standards to boost economic growth. But those declining incomes caused consumers to use up all their available credit and savings to maintain their standard of living, thus causing the Great Recession.

As the mission statement of the Center says:

“New research suggests that growing inequality in the United States may have broad social and economic effects — by reducing stable demand for goods and services, dampening entrepreneurialism, undermining the inclusiveness and responsiveness of political and economic institutions, limiting access to education, and stunting individual development.  Yet our understanding of how these mechanisms interact with the broader economy is limited.”

In December 2011 I wrote a column entitled, Equality Is Good For Everyone, when there was hope that maybe the Great Recession was finally over, and households might regain their financial footing from the busted housing bubble.

Alas, that wasn’t to be because Congress become locked in the battle over a higher debt ceiling and government spending cuts, just as the Europeans were going through their own austerity budget cuts. And so similar budget cuts were agreed to by President Obama and Congress that has reduced economic growth by as much as 1 percent per year, according to leading economists.

President Obama had just given a speech on income inequality that December at Osawatomie, Kansas, the site of Teddy Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” speech, which signaled the beginning of the progressive era that culminated in FDR’s New Deal.

Teddy Roosevelt had given his now famous speech in 1910 that called upon the three branches of the federal government to put the public welfare before the interests of money and property.

“The new Nationalism puts the National need before sectional or personal advantage,” said Roosevelt. “It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat National issues as local issues. It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from over-division of governmental powers, the impotence which makes it possible for local selfishness or for legal cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to bring National activities to a deadlock. This new Nationalism regards the executive power as the steward of public welfare. It demands of the judiciary that it shall be interested primarily in human welfare rather than in property, just as it demands that of the representative.”

Sound familiar? Obama said the Republican ideology of laissez faire, small government, free markets that existed when Teddy Roosevelt made his Osawatomie speech had resulted in too much graft and unlimited corporate power.

“It’s a simple theory — one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It’s never worked.”

Berkeley Professor and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has been most vocal on the growing divide between Haves and Have-nots that has resulted from the decline in equality with his film and book, Inequality For All. He also highlights the resultant distortions—among them a declining quality of life for most Americans, and financial markets becoming more susceptible to boom and bust cycles.

Harlan Green © 2013

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HarlanGreen

The Decline of the West

Popular Economics Weekly

Berkeley Prof Brad Delong has posted a very sobering essay on his website. Because the deficit hawks and austerity advocates now hold sway in both Europe and North America, we could be in for a very prolonged “Lesser Depression”, as he calls it.

“I had always thought that policy makers well understood the basic principle of macroeconomic management,” said this Economics Professor. “It was that the government's proper role was…to tweak asset supplies so that there were sufficient liquid assets, enough safe assets, and enough financial savings vehicles that the economy as a whole did not feel under pressure to deleverage, and so push production below potential output.”

 

“This principle has gone out the window. The working majority of the Federal Reserve believes it has extended its aggressive expansionary policies to if not beyond the bounds of prudence. The working majority in the U.S. Congress is taking its cues from the Saturday Night Live character "Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber". It believes that what the economic patient needs is another good bleeding of rigorous austerity, and that is putting further downward pressure on employment and production.”

Why do not policymakers in the West understand that it is in our best interests to prod economic activity enough to create robust growth, until enough revenues are generated to pay for keeping up with the rest of the world? Who are the deficit hawks that choose not to understand basic economics? Paul Krugman has called them out countless times.

“And why are we shortchanging the future so dramatically and inexcusably? Blame the deficit scolds,” said Krugman, “…whose constant inveighing against the risks of government borrowing, by undercutting political support for public investment and job creation, has done far more to cheat our children than deficits ever did.”

The scolds are mostly Republicans, in this case, who have become the protectors of the wealthiest among US, as they siphon ever more public funds away from public investments to their own profits.

Professor Krugman continues, “Fiscal policy is, indeed, a moral issue, and we should be ashamed of what we’re doing to the next generation’s economic prospects. But our sin involves investing too little, not borrowing too much — and the deficit scolds, for all their claims to have our children’s interests at heart, are actually the bad guys in this story.”

How do we escape the political gridlock that has trapped US between the past the the future? Part of the answer can lie in history. We had a similar situation at the beginning of the 20^th century, when robber barons ruled, and we needed a JP Morgan to finance World War I.

Teddy Roosevelt came along with an answer, which he called the “New Nationalism”. He made sure more wealth flowed to the less wealthy by busting monopolies that ruled the new industries of that day, and advocated laws and institutions to regulate them.

We are now at the beginning of the Digital Revolution, where technology is replacing workers making the necessities of life at an ever accelerating rate. So more Americans will have more leisure time to pursue their own interests. And more importantly, the ever increasing productivity of those machines will be able to lift all boats—that is, provide more necessities, as well as amenities to improve lives—rather than go only to the profit makers.

That is to say, more Americans will be able to live off the fruits of technology, if policymakers will listen to our smartest economists. Much of the Great Recession and slow recovery is due to widespread ignorance of economic fundamentals that actually depend on social welfare, as Professor Delong says. For no economy can prosper if educational and environmental standards are ignored, which enable greater social mobility and good health. It is also an ignorance of what is in our national interest. Raising educational and environmental standards, restoring our aging infrastructure, and creating a truly universal health care system make us more competitive globally.

Don’t take my word for it. Lord John Maynard Keynes saw the consequences of increasing abundance in his famous 1930 essay, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren: “Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well. The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance. But it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes.”

Professor Robert Shiller also discusses its consequences in his recent book, “The New Financial Order, Risk in the 21^st Century”, in which he lays out what our new information technologies will be able to do. In it, “Shiller describes six fundamental ideas for using modern information technology and advanced financial theory to temper basic risks that have been ignored by risk management institutions--risks to the value of our jobs and our homes, to the vitality of our communities, and to the very stability of national economies”, says the publisher, Princeton University Press.

It will do all this by leveling the playing field in order to create a greater transparency of markets, as financial information in particular will be available to all. Therefore much of the risk in one’s profession, or housing value, or even health, will be able to be insured against unexpected events, such as recessions, or loss of career, or debilitating illnesses because of the new information technologies.

So the Digital, ‘Big Data’ Revolution that is upon us gives no reason to be ignorant of how the modern world works. It will become more difficult for those who profit from such ignorance to accumulate excessive wealth. Or, as Teddy Roosevelt knew, we will continue to repeat the mistakes of past centuries.

Harlan Green © 2013

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Equality is Good for Everyone

Popular Economics Weekly

President Obama might have found his voice in jumping on the Progressive bandwagon with his Osawatomie, Kansas speech about income inequality. The small farm town of Osawatomie was where Teddy Roosevelt gave his now famous “New Nationalism” speech in 1910 that called upon the three branches of the federal government to put the public welfare before the interests of money and property.

That is what such groups as #OccupyWallStreet are calling for in renewing the cry that we are all in this together. Yet equality is more than a moral issue of what is fair, or even the core American value of everyone’s right to the pursuit of happiness. It is in fact the future.

For in an era where technology is replacing workers making the necessities of life at an ever accelerating rate, more Americans will have more leisure time to pursue their own interests. And more importantly, the ever increasing productivity of those machines will be able to lift all boats—that is, provide more necessities, as well as amenities to improve lives—rather than go only to the profit makers. That is to say, more Americans will be able to live off the fruits of technology.

In giving his Kansas speech, President Obama was going back to a time when Robber Barons ruled, having made enormous wealth from the founding of the railroads, banks, oil and steel industries in the 19^th century.

It was still the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when most of America was rural and Oligarchs ruled government and business. Sound familiar? That has happened once again with the enormous fortunes created via deregulation and the digital revolution. And once again 99 percent of American households are suffering from the excesses of modern oligarchs who want to abolish the safeguards that were established to protect householders from those excesses.

“The American people are right in demanding that new Nationalism without which we cannot hope to deal with new problems,” said Roosevelt. “The new Nationalism puts the National need before sectional or personal advantage. It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat National issues as local issues. It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from over-division of governmental powers, the impotence which makes it possible for local selfishness or for legal cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to bring National activities to a deadlock. This new Nationalism regards the executive power as the steward of public welfare. It demands of the judiciary that it shall be interested primarily in human welfare rather than in property, just as it demands that the representative.”

President Obama seems to be finally realizing that the common good is as important as the profit motive. In fact, one doesn’t work without the other. One cannot prosper if there are no rules, such as protections against predatory behavior provided by financial regulations. Congress abolished the Glass-Steagall Act that prevented banks from trading against their own clients, which created conflicts of interest. How could banks’ clients now be sure that their investments hadn’t been set up to fail, such as happened with Goldman Sachs and many other banks during the subprime bubble?

Much of the Great Recession and slow recovery is due to widespread ignorance of economic fundamentals that actually depend on social welfare. For no economy can prosper if educational and environmental standards are ignored, which enable good health and social mobility. It is also an ignorance of what is in our national interest. Raising educational and environmental standards, restoring our aging infrastructure, and creating a truly universal health care system make us more competitive globally.

Teddy Roosevelt obviously knew this when he saw the results of too much wealth in too few hands—the monopolies and cartels of his era. That was why the Federal Reserve was created in 1913. It was to protect our currency from too much speculation, just as today we need stronger institutions that protect our stock market from too much risk taking.

Obama’s speech mainly targeted the reasons for so much income equality. The theory of “trickle down economics,” which holds that greater wealth at the top generates jobs and income for the masses below, drew some of Obama’s harshest criticism, according to the Washington Post: “It’s a simple theory — one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work,” Obama said of supply-side economics, drawing extended applause. “It’s never worked.”

It is obvious why it hasn’t worked, because ‘trickle down’ Reaganomics’ believers maintain that because government is the problem, lower taxes are the answer. The problem is that public services suffer which are so necessary in our modern, already overcrowded world. More knowledge—including financial knowledge—is required to live in our complex society, just as we need safeguards against increasing pollution and crime created by increasing populations. And wealth doesn’t really trickle down, anyway. That’s why there has been so much income inequality over the past 30 years.

Don’t take my word for it. Lord John Maynard Keynes saw the consequences of increasing abundance in his famous 1930 essay, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren: “Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well. The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance. But it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes.”

Professor Robert Shiller also discusses its consequences in his recent book, “The New Financial Order, Risk in the 21^st Century”, in which he lays out what our new information technologies will be able to do. In it, “Shiller describes six fundamental ideas for using modern information technology and advanced financial theory to temper basic risks that have been ignored by risk management institutions--risks to the value of our jobs and our homes, to the vitality of our communities, and to the very stability of national economies”, says the publisher, Princeton University Press.

It will do all this by leveling the playing field in order to create a greater transparency of markets, as financial information in particular will be available to all. Therefore much of the risk in one’s profession, or housing value, or even health, will be able to be insured against unexpected events, such as recessions, or loss of career, or debilitating illnesses because of the new information technologies..

In other words, there is no longer any reason to be ignorant of how the modern world works. It will become more difficult for those who profit from such ignorance to accumulate excessive wealth. Or, as Teddy Roosevelt knew, we will continue to repeat our past mistakes.

Harlan Green © 2011