Democrats are caught in structural hypocrisy as they juggle the interests of Wall. St, workers, the right-wing and the progressive wing of the party. Rana Foroohar and Mark Blyth join Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast. transcript Paul Jay Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast. Ple

Democrats are caught in structural hypocrisy as they juggle the interests of Wall. St, workers, the right-wing and the progressive wing of the party. Rana Foroohar and Mark Blyth join Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast.

transcript

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast. Please don't forget we have a year-end fundraising campaign on with a matching grant from a generous donor. If you donate a buck he'll match it for a buck. If you donate monthly, he'll multiply it times 12 and match that. All told, he'll match up to ten thousand bucks. So, if you haven't donated already or if you want to raise your monthly, now's a good time to do it.

President-elect Joe Biden's cabinet and senior team is taking shape, and so far, it looks a lot more like Barack than Bernie. In fact, it doesn't look like Sanders at all. That shouldn't be a surprise. But some of the appointments seem downright meant to send a dismissive message to the Sanders/AOC camp. Looking at the stock markets, Wall Street seems pleased.

Two key economic posts went to people who are more or less on the opposite side of the Democratic Party from Sanders. Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, will be the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Matt Taibbi writes that Sanders is the ranking member and perhaps future chair of the Senate Budget Committee, so every time Bernie even thinks about doing committee business, he'll be looking up at Neera Tanden. David Sirota writes, "She is the single biggest, most aggressive Bernie Sanders critic in the United States of America." BlackRock veteran Brian Deese will serve as Chief Economic Adviser as head of the National Economic Council. BlackRock is the largest asset management company in the world, with over $7 trillion under management. Together with a few other large asset management companies, vote the shares that control 90 percent of the S&P 500. They don't run these companies, but they sure get to say who does.

Tanden and Deese will be two of the strongest voices advising Biden on his economic policies. All this as the Covid pandemic spreads out of control across much of the country and the world and tens of thousands sink into poverty or deeper poverty.

Now joining us are Rana Foroohar, who is a business columnist and associate editor at The Financial Times. She's also CNN's global economic analyst. Her books include Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of the American Business and Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles. And Mark Blyth is a political economist at Brown University. He researches the cause of stability and change in the economy. And, as he says, why people continue to believe stupid economic ideas despite buckets of evidence to the contrary. Thank you both for joining us.

Rana Foroohar

Thank you.

Paul Jay

So, Mark, why don't you kick off with what you make of these two appointments that I mentioned. What does it mean for the progressives like Bernie and AOC who really fought very hard to elect Biden and now seem to be more or less out in the cold?

Mark Blyth

I'd actually like to hand this one off to Rana, to be perfectly frank.