It’s been a year since a prostitution scandal forced Eliot Spitzer to resign as governor of New York – that means it’s about time for a comeback, yes?
This month, Spitzer has appeared on WNYC, New York City’s NPR station, talking about the bank bailouts and the scandal around AIG, as well as penned pieces in Newsweek’s aptly-titled series, “The Thinking Man’s Guide to Populist Rage,” and about college loans on Slate.com (note, maybe relevant: Slate.com is owned by Newsweek).
In the Newsweek article, Spitzer describes risk as the most important externality to private transactions that we must now confront:
We have socialized risk through massive bailouts and privatized gain for by leaving the upside exclusively to the insiders. That system will fail over and over again if we do not shift the burden of risk back to those who expect the gain.
Spitzer’s economic prescriptions are a bit over my head to grasp fully or comment on, but my interest has been piqued to see this former white knight of NY riding the rising populist current here in the US back to political relevance.
Note: is it a mark of a successful comeback or a sign that the prostitution scandal has not yet left him that Spitzer is mentioned in the MySpace article I discussed in this post?