Another Strong Endorsement for Tom Geoghegan

This one from Thomas Frank in the Wall Street Journal:

Now that conservative orthodoxy has collapsed in a heap of complex derivatives, I can't help but think what a refreshing dose of plain-spoken Midwestern reality Mr. Geoghegan could bring to the nation as a whole.

To begin with, Mr. Geoghegan thinks big while Democrats in Washington tend to think small, proposing a stimulus package here and better oversight there. The government's goal, as he explained it to me a few days ago, should not merely be "to pump up demand again." It should be to enact sweeping, structural change, "to get in a position where we're not bleeding jobs out of the country."

[snip]

It is also time, he says, to change the relationship between the financial sector and the rest of the economy. After all, as he tells me, "We bought into these banks, we ought to have directors on the boards. We the people, as stockholders, have different interests than some other stockholders because we have some other ideas about how we prosper in the long term."

For example, "rather than go for high-roller returns on financial speculations," a publicly appointed director "might be willing to accept lower returns in manufacturing where we can be globally competitive and create good jobs."

This is supposed to be a time for bold ideas on the left, with the failures of the free-market consensus becoming more glaring and more painful by the day. And Mr. Geoghegan's ideas should be part of the debate.