It is yet another tragic consequence of the financial crisis that it has brought to power the politician most likely to create the next one....

The main government body responsible for dealing with the crisis, the Federal Reserve Board—removed from direct democracy and run rather mysteriously by academic economists—made an ideal target for populist rage. Fed policies benefitted the rich more than others: low interest rates were paired with “quantitative easing,” in which the Fed purchased the kinds of financial instruments that most people don’t have, like mortgage-backed securities and long-term bonds. Hedge-fund managers who played the rising markets with borrowed funds did well; people on salaries who saved a little money every month and put it in interest-bearing accounts did poorly. By 2010, the Tea Party had become a national movement, and dozens of its adherents were elected to Congress. The left generated a protest movement, too, with Occupy Wall Street, which revolted against the mainstream of the Democratic Party and led to the emergence of Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as major Party figures.

Astonishingly, the main political beneficiary of all this energy was Donald Trump, a plutocrat with a long history of taking on too much debt, stiffing his business partners, and not paying taxes. But, while most of his primary opponents ran on more familiar limited-government themes, and Hillary Clinton was fending off the attack from Sanders, Trump figured out that a Republican could run against Wall Street. He made unsubstantiated, sweeping, and brutally effective attacks on Clinton for having “done nothing” for thirty years about the economic troubles of middle-class and poor Americans.

Source: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/1...