Broback's Blog

Barry Ritholtz asserts that the essential political shift that’s occurring is that the conflict between right and left has shifted to become the people vs the corporate interests. He provides several specific examples of how those worlds collide, but left a couple out that are near and dear to my heart. Both fall under the heading of land use:

One is the power of corporations to take your property with the enthusiastic assistance of the government in order to pursue their commercial interests, thanks to the Kelo v. City of New London decision by the supreme court.

The other is exemplified by the post I took live earlier today regarding the ability of developers to run roughshod over zoning and land-use regulations in order to overwhelm municipal infrastructure. In this local case, it was not just regulatory negligence, but by all appearances active and aggressive collaboration by regulators to work against the best interests of the citizens.

That being said, I believe the right vs left battle is alive and well and if anything re-energized of late. Anti corporate populism has existed for generations and has been based on real and large-scale conflicts.

Thanks to Steve Roth for sending me the Ritholtz link…