文章 - 克鲁格曼: 富豪政治的恐慌

占领华尔街抗议运动是否会改变美国的方向还需时日才能确认，但这些抗议已经引发了来自华尔街的歇斯底里反应，也就是来自那些超级富豪，那些为最富有的0.01%阶层忠诚服务的政客和学究。

这种反应说明一个重要的问题——即，威胁美国价值的极端主义分子是罗斯福所称的“经济保皇分子”，而不是在祖可蒂公园安营扎寨的人们。

先看看共和党政客如何描述这些中型规模而不但扩大的示威活动，这些示威中与警方发生了一些冲突——这些冲突看来大量是因为警方过度反应而引起的——但是没有一场示威活动可以称为骚乱。事实上，到目前为止，示威活动远不如2009年夏季茶会党群众的表现激烈。

尽管如此，众议院多数党领袖埃里克·康特斥示威者为“暴民”，说示威是“美国人斗美国人”。共和党总统候选人们也纷纷发言，米特·罗姆尼谴责示威者是发动“阶级斗争”，而赫尔曼·凯因说他们“反美。” 不过，让我最乐的倒是兰德·保罗：不知出于什么原因，他担心示威者会开始抢夺Ipad，因为他们可能会认为富人们不值得拥有这些玩意儿。

本身就是个金融业巨头的纽约市市长迈克尔·布隆伯格，言辞较为温和。不过，他还是谴责示威者试图“从这个城市中工作的人们的手里抢走工作岗位，”这种说法与该运动的实际目标毫无共同之处。

还有，听听CNBC电视那些大牌主持人说的，您知道了示威者们“让他们自己奇异的旗子飘扬，”他们“与列宁保持一致”等等。

要理解所有这一切，就必须认识到其实这是一种规模更大的综合症的一部分。这种病症表现为，富裕的美国人从经过操纵对其有利的体制中获得了巨大的好处，现在对指出这种体制如何受到操纵的人予以歇斯底里般的反对。

大家也许还记得，去年面对奥巴马总统相当温和的批评，大批金融大亨们狂暴了。他们谴责奥巴马支持所谓沃克尔规则，说他差不多是个社会主义分子，而所谓沃克尔规则仅仅是限制得到政府担保的银行从事风险性投机活动。说到对堵塞让他们这些人享受非常低税率的漏洞的提案的反应，好家伙，黑石集团的主席斯蒂芬·施瓦茨曼将其比作希特勒入侵波兰。

然后就是针对目前正在竞选马萨诸塞州参议员的金融改革家伊丽莎白·沃伦的人格损毁行动。不久以前，沃伦女士关于富人纳税问题作了非常实在的讲话，其YouTube 视频文件在网上疯传。她什么激进的东西都没说——最多也就是奥利弗·温德尔·霍姆斯大法官“税收是支付给文明社会的”名言的一种现代翻版。

然而，听听那些富人的忠实捍卫者是怎么评论的吧：你会感到沃伦女士简直就是托洛茨基再世。乔治·威尔宣布她的纲领是“集体主义计划”，她认为“个人主义是个神话传说。”拉什·林堡则称她是“憎恨母体的寄生虫。一边从母体汲取，一边打算毁灭母体。”

到底怎么了？回答必然是，华尔街的主人们深深地认识到，从道义上讲他们根本站不住脚。他们不是约翰·高尔特；他们更不是乔布斯。他们是靠兜售复杂的金融计划而暴发的人，这些计划根本没有给美国人民带来好处，相反却将他们推入一场危机之中，而其恶果还在继续摧毁数千万同胞公民的生活。

然而，他们却没有付出任何代价。他们的机构被用纳税人的钱援救了，而附加的条件却很少。他们继续从显性及隐性联邦政府担保中获取好处。根本上说，他们还在玩“赢了他们赚，输了纳税人承担倒霉”的游戏。他们依然钻着税收政策的漏洞，在许多情况下每年收入数百万美元的人缴纳的税金竟比中产阶级家庭还少。

这种特殊的待遇是经不起仔细审视——因此，在他们看来，压根就不该有任何审视。谁说出了这个明显的事实，不管说得怎样平静温和，都必须妖魔化，然后赶下台。事实上，批评者越是理性温和，则越应该立刻被妖魔化，于是就有了对伊丽莎白·沃伦的疯狂玷污。

那么，谁在这里真正是非美国的？不是抗议者们，他们只是想发出声音。真正的极端分子是美国的金融寡头，他们要压制对他们财富来源的任何批评。

引用请注明人文与社会网址 wen.org.cn

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.
And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a “collectivist agenda,” that she believes that “individualism is a chimera.” And Rush Limbaugh called her “a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it.”

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.

So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.