Marriner Eccles On Saving Capitalism

London Banker gives excerpts of Marriner Eccles' testimony in Congress in 1933, prior to being invited by FDR to help draft legislation to address the financial industry in the Great Depression (h/t naked capitalism)  The portion receiving the most attention:

Such measures as I have proposed may frighten those of our people who possess wealth. However, they should feel reassured in reflecting upon the following quotation from one of our leading economists:

It is utterly impossible, as this country has demonstrated again and again, for the rich to save as much as they have been trying to save, and save anything that is worth saving. They can save idle factories and useless railroad coaches; they can save empty office buildings and closed banks; they can save paper evidences of foreign loans; but as a class they can not save anything that is worth saving, above and beyond the amount that is made profitable by the increase of consumer buying. It is for the interests of the well to do – to protect them from the results of their own folly – that we should take from them a sufficient amount of their surplus to enable consumers to consume and business to operate at a profit. This is not “soaking the rich”; it is saving the rich. Incidentally, it is the only way to assure them the serenity and security which they do not have at the present moment.

I think this gets directly at our current situation.  Individuals making rational choices on their own are doing what is right for themselves, but, combined, are making the problems worse, and hurting themselves.  We will need those with the most to give something up, to save themselves, and everyone else.  This will require true public servants, who put the interests of the country ahead of their own political prospects and ideologies.  So far, I have yet to see them on the scene.  Could it be that we are already too far down the line of politcal corruption by business interests to see such people rise to the top?  I hope not, but looking at the candidates for president (including the current president) I'm not so sure.