Thanks everyone for participating!

As someone who has covered the Social Security debate since Peterson first started up, I’m curious what you make of this specific moment. On one hand the need for Social Security and the failure of 401(k)s is becoming common sense; on the other hand Obama has called for chaining the CPI. Where do you think this will go?

Bob, I’m curious why you don’t see larger protests in the United States like there are in, say, Spain? Crucially, why don’t things like Occupy connect better to a larger Democratic politics, the way right protests connect right into a money and influence chain, as we say with the Tea Party?

Also, do you think things are changing in Europe? What do you think are plausible endgames, and which are the ideal ones?

How has state-and-local level politics played out in the United States? I think they are polarizing in a terrible way that will have long-term consequences, but I’m wondering what you make of it under the Debtors’ Prison thesis.

Ha – confused my schedule right before hitting “submit comment.” Don’t worry, I’m around.

Also where do you see the housing market going from here? I read a lot of “housing is back” stories, and I wonder what you make of them.

Throughout most of the crisis, roughly 25% to 33% of people with a mortgage are underwater. There’s been surprisingly little “strategic default”, maybe 10% of all default, and even then the numbers are very difficult to understand. The debts are sticking, and they have dragged down the economy.

As we come to the end, I’m interested in what you found genuinely interesting, or thought-changing, while researching this book. I imagine FDL readers keep track of, say, the debates over austerity, and know many things about where the economy stands. Your book places it in a complete history of the moment but also a longer history across time – that must have required a lot new research, and I wonder what surprised you.

As a random question: I’m a big fan of your book “Everything for Sale,” which I think is an excellent introduction to the way markets work and don’t work alongside the government. Highly recommended.

You’ve written many books. Looking back, which books do you think got it right, and which do you think missed the mark?

In the short-term, this leaves us an agenda to stop austerity, boost demand, and combat the power of the banks. And there’s some agenda items for this (end sequestration, direct job programs, higher capital requirements and a serious Volcker Rule).

I’m curious, especially as you look to 2016 and beyond, where left-liberals should be focusing their eyes on the medium-term agenda for issues surrounding the economy and government.

“But I totally agree: the brilliance of the book is how clearly it explains what is really going on, how it distinguishes, for example, among various “kinds” of “debt,” how it presents facts many of us have never seen.”

For those reading, I write and study this stuff day-in and day-out, and I learned quite a bit about where everything is coming from and where it is going. So I’d give a similar recommendation. For the general audience, what stuff stood out the most Mauimom?

Ha sorry Mauimom, meant to reply to Bob!

I’m curious about where you see the United States going from here. You discuss a topic called “financial repression” at the book’s conclusion – I was wondering if you could discuss what it is (and isn’t), and why it might be important for future policymaking.

I’m curious about where you see the United States going from here. You discuss a topic called “financial repression” at the book’s conclusion – I was wondering if you could discuss what it is (and isn’t), and why it might be important for future policymaking.

I was also interested in your history of bankruptcy as both a tool of egalitarian reform as well as a way for corporate elite to protect their own interests over time. Can you give us the elevator pitch on why this matters?

It’s worth noting a progressive hero quick to the scene, Elizabeth Warren, is also one of the country’s major bankruptcy experts. Why do you think this doesn’t get more interest?

It’s remarkable how clear the story is once it is put out there, and also remarkable that so little action is taken. Where are some places you think we’ve gone wrong? And why is that – some argue some elite directly benefit from the chaos, while others argue that it more reflects a broken government structure? What is your take?

BevW, thanks for arranging this.

Hey Bob – to get started, how would you explain the current situation that the United States and Europe finds itself in? Especially when compared to commonplace narratives about how things are struggling because of high government debts, or structural problems in the labor force, or “uncertainty”?

bmaz: I think that’s an important and well-phrased question. The progressives and New Dealers were social workers and economists, but above all they were lawyers. And while there have been liberal critiques of the conservative revolution, particularly in terms of civil liberties and human rights, the economic space strikes me as underdeveloped.

A lot obvious depends on the Roberts court’s next few moves; if they strike down healthcare under a ruberic of “economic liberty” we have a whole crazy fight to deal with.

I’d like to see more done on legal frontiers with issues of “public utilities.” From finance, to telecomm, to patents, a lot of economic rents get sucked out of the public to the top 1% – but this is a legal choice on how we structure these relationships. These rents will not be going away in the near future – they may even become more of the core of how we exchange value and grow the the economy. The question is who benefits.

Hey Gar, two more on left economics. The first question for many of these is what services and relationships will be turned into commodities. Is health care a right, or is it simple a good we purchase more or less of? What about education? And so on. What areas does the left need to focus on removing from the marketplace? And what perhaps should go into markets?

Second: A lot of “market socialism” on the left involves socializing who gets wealth from ownership, but it leaves the worker-boss relationship in place. You focus on a lot on how employee ownership can mitigate a lot of this – but how do you deal with the issue of “dirty jobs”, the toilets that need to be cleaned, the unglamarous or dangerous jobs that will exist in any world?

Gar,one balancing act a lot of progressives have to deal with is what I call a “back to 2007″ issue. With mass unemployment and a weak recovery a lot of people are simply calling for an unemployment rate under 5% – we want jobs no matter what!

But in the long-run many jobs need to go (incarceration, military, wasteful intermediaries in many other industries), the work week needs to come down, and prosperity needs to be broadly shared.

The right has focused all its energy on its own long-term strategy (eliminate the New Deal/Great Society) while the left is just trying to deal with the short-term issue of weak employment. How do progressives split or incorporate both the short and long term in a useful way?