There are only two substantial recommendations in Roemer's model of
coupon socialism: 1) Expropriate present day capitalists and start every-
one out as a capitalist with an identical portfolio with a ban on selling
stocks for money or goods. Hopefully we all now understand that this would
NOT equalize non-wage income. 2) Solve the principle/agent problem, namely
that firm managers might not maximize profits, or ones that do a poor job of
it might not be replaced by ones who do a better job of it, by having invest-
ment financed by large banks. Not only are Devine and McClintock's comments
about large banks not necessarily doing this well, and no answer to the
question who monitors the bank managers right on the money, but the political
implications of Roemer's non-solution are mind boggling. Roemer makes no
bones about the fact that he does not think that "economic democracy" is very
important. He has dismissed workers' self-management as unimportant, and would
probably willingly accept the label "economic technocrat" as opposed to "econ-
omic democrat." But for someone like Bob Pollin to embrace an avowedly author-
itarian vision for the financial sector, while working on conferences and pro-
jects to democratize the banking industry and financial sector is hard to under
stand. Roemer's second recommendation is to borrow the fascist option from
capitalism for solving the enterprise manager p¢a problem. How innovative.
