LETTERS

Ben Bernanke didn’t intervene until two big banks had collapsed. What happened? There was a run on a basically unregulated “shadow banking” system.

Deregulation also created a “housing bubble” of “subprime” mortgages by predatory lenders who targeted poorer people who hadn’t qualified for a loan previously.

In Feb. 2009, CNBC commentator Rick Santelli delivered the “rant heard around the world” on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. As a financial analyst for the business news channel, he denounced the government for “promoting bad behavior” by “subsidiz[ing] the losers’ mortgages” instead of rewarding “the people that could carry the water instead of drink the water.” He called for a “tea party.”

Santelli didn’t mention the government’s bailouts of Wall Street bigshots. His rant was promoted by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the Drudge Report. A movement was born. Implicitly and sometimes explicitly racist, it attracted suburban, white small business and professional types and was funded by libertarian capitalists like the Kochs.

CAN YOU SAY ‘DIRTY HIPPIE’?

I have mixed feelings about BW’s cover story about advice from Boulder’s “meme queen,” particularly the response “Help, I’ve Fallen in Love with a Hippy.” I have written a book, Happily Hippie-American, in which I argue that what I call “HippieAmericans” are in fact part of a modern ethnicity, now over half-a-century old, that has made many important social contributions (such as the invention of the personal computer and the natural/organic-foods industry, for examples) and comprises over 10% of today’s America. This ethnic perspective is an enlightened way in which to see and understand the counterculture, as opposed to the cliché that Hippies were just a thing

In 2010, they would help the Republicans win their victories in the elections. The Tea Party still exists. It morphed into MAGA.

The current bank troubles grew out of Trump administration deregulation (which was supported by many Democrats). The anti-government tech bros of Silicon Valley now are whining and yipping for the feds to rescue them.

There’s MAGA mega-donor Peter Thiel, the leading Silicon Valley libertarian who promoted cryptocurrency and floating tax refuges beyond the reach of government. His firm promoted a run on the Silicon Valley Bank through social media. In 2009, Thiel wrote that democracy is no longer compatible with freedom. He explained:

“The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.” of the 1960s, something that ignores the fact that most of today’s HippieAmericans were not born until long after the 1960s ended. And of course, minorities, whether racial, ethnic, religious or sexual, are scapegoated and stereotyped. As such, Ms. Vermeire’s casual comment about an “unwashed lover” should be seen as an obvious and ugly stereotype. If such a comment were made about any other group, readers would clearly see it as such, and no newspaper would publish it. Why, then, when someone says it about a Hippie-American, do we brush it off as something acceptable, as witty and urbane humor? Can you say “dirty hippie”?

— Paul Dougan/Boulder