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…On Slate’s Political Gabfest podcast for April 22, moderator John Dickerson asked his panel consisting of Slate editor David Plotz and Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon, if Wall Street banks had a responsibility to self-regulate and do what’s right as opposed to solely relying on legislation to set the boundaries. That inspired an "impassioned" populist response from Plotz.
"Can I spin this question in an entirely different way — which is, I don’t really care what Wall Street banks have to say because I’m not a politician," Plotz said. "I don’t take a lot of donations from them. I think it is appalling and shocking that neither party, either President Obama who wants real financial reform or the Republicans who ought to as well have stood up and taken the reasonable American position, which is the behavior of Wall Street, is absolutely disgusting."
But Plotz took it a step further… and suggested actual means to express outrage – hopefully metaphorically, but it isn’t clear. He cited an April 9 story from ProPublica that contended a hedge fund called Magnetar prolonged the housing bubble and stories from Michael Lewis’ much-ballyhooed book, "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" as the sources of this outrage.
"And we shouldn’t talk to them, try to persuade them," he continued. "We should burn them down. We should go after them with pitchforks, knives, guns, clubs we find, mace – anything, because it’s appalling..."
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