How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt our Finances, Freedom, and Security

From the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street, however divergent their political views, these groups seem united by one thing: outrage over a system of power and influence that only serves the interests of a small number of corrupt elites. Increasingly, protesters on both ends of the political spectrum and the media are using the word “corrupt” to describe an illusory system of power that has shed any accountability to those it was meant to help and govern. In her new book, Janine Wedel, a university professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and a grantee of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, charts a fast–evolving system of power and influence that is utterly unaccountable to those it is supposed to serve, largely because “we the public” has an information problem. Who is accountable? What are the remedies available to the average citizen? If there is accountability, it is in places which are not socially represented or publicly accessible. The elites have access to thes