No Room at the Top End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration

Intro:

On 27 March 2009, President Barack Obama met a group of bank CEOs. Known for his cool head, on this occasion he lost his patience, though not because he was an enemy of the sector – the previous year, when he was still a senator, he had voted for a $700 billion bank bailout. After listening to the attempts by the CEOs to justify their sky-high salaries, the president interrupted them. ‘My administration’, he told them, ‘is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.’

It was a good line. At the time it sounded like the kind of exaggeration that is commonplace in politics…..