Business columnist legend Allan Sloan files a long article on "What's Still Wrong with Wall Street" in TIME Magazine this week, and unlike his shorter column in The Washington Post earlier this week, I kept waiting for him to tell me something I didn't already know.
The article is elegantly written but fails to persuade. He criticizes Wall Street's bonus culture, but seems to feel that Wall Street's middle class, those who get $250,000 bonuses on $150,000 salaries, should be spared.
He calls for more regulation of how the banks do business, break-ups to solve "too big to fail," etc., but also says don't trust Uncle Sam to protect the financial system.
Using the common proxies of Fox News and MSNBC he criticizes rhetorical extremism - as if one extreme or the other can't be right on an issue.
The article seems to be casting about for a narrative to sustain it and doesn't add anything to the conversation about the big issues it tackles.
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