I have to second Jonah’s endorsement of Jonathan Chait’s article on the perplexities of the current economic moment (The New Republic ought to bring it out from behind its subscription firewall). It’s a very fine piece of work, and that thud you just heard was Chait falling on the floor in shock at receiving praise from me. The one disagreement I have to voice is the idea that nobody was talking about the disproportionate gains of the rich in the 1990s. It was a major talking point at the time. The only reason the talk didn’t explode into screams and yells was precisely that a Democratic administration was in power and its happy talk was far more convincing to the media than Republican happy talk.