Americans have long exhibited a suspicion of concentrated pools of capital controlled by small groups of people. During convulsive economic times, with little understanding as to the causes and great fear as to the effects of the turmoil, we have tended to the diversion of scapegoating paranoia. Alan Brinkley’s 1982 book on Depression-era populists Huey Long and Father Coughlin captures this mood well in describing how the two demagogues railed against “large, faceless institutions; wealthy, insulated men; vast networks of national and international influence: all exercising power and controlling wealth that more properly belongs in the hands of ordinary citizens.”