Sea­son 3 of The Bor­gias pre­mieres on Show­time this Sun­day . For those not yet ensnared in this addic­tion, the series tells the sto­ry of Renais­sance Pope Alexan­der VI, one of the papacy’s most dev­il­ish­ly inter­est­ing char­ac­ters. Show­time takes the usu­al Hol­ly­wood lib­er­ties with his­to­ry, though Alexan­der, born in Spain as Rodri­go de Bor­gia, led a life that needs no embell­ish­ing. A curi­ous mix of reli­gios­i­ty and world­li­ness, cal­cu­la­tion and dis­si­pa­tion, he would slip com­fort­ably into our own cul­ture as a larg­er-than-life celebri­ty or phi­lan­der­ing politi­cian. His­to­ri­an John Julius Nor­wich reck­ons that Alexan­der “fathered no few­er than eight chil­dren by at least three dif­fer­ent women,” but that nev­er dis­tract­ed him from his cen­tral task of pro­tect­ing the wealth, pow­er and influ­ence of the papa­cy against ris­ing nation-states like France and Spain. Though oth­ers saw him as a cor­rupter of the church, Alexan­der always imag­ined him­self as its sav­ior and protecter.

His many ene­mies includ­ed a Domini­can fri­ar named Sava­naro­la, whose fiery ser­mons against the excess­es of Alexan­der and of Florence’s rul­ing Medici fam­i­ly delight­ed and inspired the Flo­ren­tine mass­es. Though a mem­ber of a reli­gious order, Sava­naro­la believed that God spoke to him direct­ly, not through the reli­gious hier­ar­chy, con­strain­ing him to pro­claim harsh words against Pope and prince.

So it is with David Stock­man. An insider’s insid­er – Stock­man was a Con­gress­man, Pres­i­dent Reagan’s Direc­tor of the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get, then a Wall Street banker who came to a bad end in 2007 – Stock­man, like Sava­naro­la, broke ranks with the estab­lish­ment, preach­ing eco­nom­ic ruin. This being the dig­i­tal age, Stock­man doesn’t expound his mes­sage of doom on the streets of Wash­ing­ton or the canyons of Wall Street, in the man­ner of Sava­naro­la. Instead he chats it up with Jon Stew­art and Wall Street Jour­nal edi­tors, writes a book, and deliv­ers tid­ings of despair in an East­er morn­ing op-ed in the New York Times.

His mes­sage is as straight­for­ward as it is dark.

“The Unit­ed States is broke — fis­cal­ly, moral­ly, intel­lec­tu­al­ly,” his Times op-ed declares. “When the lat­est bub­ble pops, there will be noth­ing to stop the collapse.”

Sava­naro­la would have employed more apoc­a­lyp­tic imagery, per­haps, (pop­ping bub­bles hard­ly com­pares with stars shoot­ing mad­ly from their spheres), but Stockman’s mes­sage is no less ominous.

As he sees it, the seeds of our destruc­tion were sown dur­ing the Roo­sevelt Admin­is­tra­tion and the resul­tant tox­ic weeds that now choke our econ­o­my have been cul­ti­vat­ed ever since by politi­cians of both par­ties and by the Fed­er­al Reserve. He is crit­i­cal of gov­ern­ment deficits – he famous­ly quit the Rea­gan Admin­is­tra­tion because the Pres­i­dent did not share his pas­sion for bal­anced fed­er­al bud­gets – which he sees as a mis­guid­ed Key­ne­sian eco­nom­ics. And he is espe­cial­ly crit­i­cal of the Fed­er­al Reserve, which he accus­es of “dig­i­tal­ly print[ing] new mon­ey at the astound­ing rate of $600 mil­lion per hour.”

This new mon­ey, cou­pled with gov­ern­ment bor­row­ing, far from grow­ing the econ­o­my as Key­ne­sians pre­dict­ed, has brought it to the edge of ruin. Stock­man sees evi­dence of this decline all around him. Since, 2000, he writes:

“Eco­nom­ic out­put has grown by an aver­age of 1.7 per­cent a year (the slow­est since the Civ­il War); real busi­ness invest­ment has crawled for­ward at only 0.8 per­cent per year; and the pay­roll job count has crept up at a neg­li­gi­ble 0.1 per­cent annu­al­ly. Real medi­an fam­i­ly income growth has dropped 8 per­cent, and the num­ber of full-time mid­dle class jobs, 6 per­cent. The real net worth of the “bot­tom” 90 per­cent has dropped by one-fourth. The num­ber of food stamp and dis­abil­i­ty aid recip­i­ents has more than dou­bled, to 59 mil­lion, about one in five Americans.”

As he traces the arc of our decline, Stock­man sin­gles out for­mer Fed­er­al Reserve Chair­man Alan Greenspan’s loose mon­e­tary poli­cies for par­tic­u­lar criticism.

“That Mr. Greenspan’s loose mon­e­tary poli­cies didn’t set off infla­tion was only because domes­tic prices for goods and labor were crushed by the huge flow of imports from the fac­to­ries of Asia. By off­shoring America’s trad­able-goods sec­tor, the Fed kept the Con­sumer Price Index con­tained, but also per­mit­ted the excess liq­uid­i­ty to fos­ter a roar­ing infla­tion in finan­cial assets. Mr. Greenspan’s pan­der­ing incit­ed the great­est equi­ty boom in his­to­ry, with the stock mar­ket ris­ing five­fold between the 1987 crash and the 2000 dot-com bust.

“Soon Amer­i­cans stopped sav­ing and con­sumed every­thing they earned and all they could bor­row. The Asians, burned by their own 1997 finan­cial cri­sis, were hap­py to oblige us. They — Chi­na and Japan above all — accu­mu­lat­ed huge dol­lar reserves, trans­form­ing their cen­tral banks into a string of mon­e­tary roach motels where sov­er­eign debt goes in but nev­er comes out. We’ve been liv­ing on bor­rowed time — and spend­ing Asians’ bor­rowed dimes.”

Greenspan’s flood of mon­ey, Stock­man says, result­ed in a big boom and bust cycle for Wall Street, fueled yawn­ing trade imbal­ances with Asia, and enabled con­sumers to use cred­it to live beyond their means despite stag­nat­ing wages. Greenspan was suc­ceed­ed as Fed Chair­man by Ben Bernanke, whose poli­cies fueled the hous­ing boom and enriched Wall Street bankers.

“The explo­sion of the hous­ing mar­ket, abet­ted by pho­ny cred­it rat­ings, secu­ri­ti­za­tion shenani­gans and will­ful mal­prac­tice by mort­gage lenders, orig­i­na­tors and bro­kers, has been well doc­u­ment­ed. Less known is the bal­ance-sheet explo­sion among the top 10 Wall Street banks dur­ing the eight years end­ing in 2008. Though their tiny sliv­er of equi­ty cap­i­tal hard­ly grew, their depen­dence on unsta­ble “hot mon­ey” soared as the reg­u­la­to­ry har­ness the Glass-Stea­gal Act had wise­ly imposed dur­ing the Depres­sion was total­ly dismantled.”

But Stock­man reserves his harsh­est crit­i­cism for the bailouts engi­neered by Bernanke and his com­pa­tri­ots Tim Gei­th­n­er, then head of the New York Fed, and then-Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Hank Paul­son, whose bailouts of Wall Street, he says, exem­pli­fy crony capitalism.

“There was nev­er a remote threat of a Great Depres­sion 2.0 or of a finan­cial nuclear win­ter, con­trary to the dire warn­ings of Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chair­man since 2006. The Great Fear — man­i­fest­ed by the stock mar­ket plunge when the House vot­ed down the TARP bailout before cav­ing and pass­ing it — was pure­ly anoth­er Wall Street con­coc­tion. Had Pres­i­dent Bush and his Gold­man Sachs advis­er (a k a Trea­sury Sec­re­tary) Hen­ry M. Paul­son Jr. stood firm, the cri­sis would have burned out on its own and met­ed out to spec­u­la­tors the loss­es they so rich­ly deserved. The Main Street bank­ing sys­tem was nev­er in seri­ous jeop­ardy, ATMs were not going dark and the mon­ey mar­ket indus­try was not imploding.

“Instead, the White House, Con­gress and the Fed, under Mr. Bush and then Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, made a series of des­per­ate, reck­less maneu­vers that were not only unnec­es­sary but ruinous.”

The bailouts didn’t stop the stock market’s skid, how­ev­er, and the major indices touched mul­ti-year lows in March 2009. But the bull mar­ket is now in its fifth year and the S&P 500 has climbed beyond its 2007 highs. Doesn’t that vin­di­cate the Fed­er­al Reserve’s pol­i­cy? Quite the con­trary, accord­ing Stock­man. By bloat­ing its bal­ance sheet, the Fed risks eco­nom­ic havoc.

“If and when the Fed — which now promis­es to get unem­ploy­ment below 6.5 per­cent as long as infla­tion doesn’t exceed 2.5 per­cent — even hints at shrink­ing its bal­ance sheet, it will elic­it a tidal wave of sell orders, because even a mod­est drop in bond prices would destroy the arbi­trageurs’ prof­its. Notwith­stand­ing Mr. Bernanke’s assur­ances about even­tu­al­ly, grad­u­al­ly mak­ing a smooth exit, the Fed is domi­ciled in a mon­e­tary prison of its own making…

“What’s at hand is a Great Defor­ma­tion, aris­ing from a rogue cen­tral bank that has abet­ted the Wall Street casi­no, cru­ci­fied savers on a cross of zero inter­est rates and fueled a glob­al com­mod­i­ty bub­ble that erodes Main Street liv­ing stan­dards through ris­ing food and ener­gy prices — a form of infla­tion that the Fed feck­less­ly dis­re­gards in cal­cu­lat­ing inflation.

“These poli­cies have brought Amer­i­ca to an end-stage metas­ta­sis. The way out would be so rad­i­cal it can’t hap­pen. It would neces­si­tate a sweep­ing divorce of the state and the mar­ket econ­o­my. It would require a renun­ci­a­tion of crony cap­i­tal­ism and its first cousin: Key­ne­sian eco­nom­ics in all its forms. The state would need to get out of the busi­ness of impe­r­i­al hubris, eco­nom­ic uplift and social insur­ance and shift its focus to man­ag­ing and financ­ing an effec­tive, afford­able, means-test­ed safe­ty net.”

Stock­man believes that our polit­i­cal sys­tem lacks the resolve to change its ways, lock­ing us in to irre­versible decline. At least Sava­naro­la believed that if the Flo­ren­tines repent­ed their van­i­ties and cast off the yoke of the Medici, God would show them mer­cy. Amer­i­ca, unlike Flo­rence, lies beyond God’s redeem­ing hand, accord­ing to Stock­man. The next bub­ble will pop and noth­ing will stop our col­lapse. His con­clud­ing advice:

“Get out of the mar­kets and hide out in cash.”

It should be said that the estab­lish­ment regards Stock­man as a bit of a loon, just as Pope Alexan­der must have regard­ed Sava­naro­la. Fig­ures on the left like Paul Krug­man believe that the Fed­er­al Reserve, far from being reck­less, as Stock­man main­tains, has actu­al­ly been too timid, that it should flood the banks with more mon­ey and that Con­gress should run even larg­er deficits. Our tepid eco­nom­ic recov­ery, accord­ing to these thinkers, is due to our squea­mish­ness about gov­ern­ment debt and infla­tion. Fig­ures on the right believe that if Con­gress and the Pres­i­dent were to com­mit to fis­cal rec­ti­tude, the econ­o­my would right itself over the longer term.

But Stock­man is not so eas­i­ly dis­missed. Both par­ties seem curi­ous­ly small and inef­fec­tive at explain­ing, much less address­ing, more than five years of eco­nom­ic sput­ter­ing. And the Fed­er­al Reserve, as Stock­man right­ly notes, fore­saw nei­ther the real estate bub­ble nor its col­lapse and still denies its respon­si­bil­i­ty for either. Chair­man Bernanke’s cur­rent claim that the Fed can unwind its tril­lions in asset pur­chas­es with­out crash­ing equi­ty mar­kets is less cred­i­ble giv­en past failures.

Like Pope Alexan­der and the Medicis, our lead­ers are con­vinced that they’re doing what’s best. Alexan­der deft­ly steered the church through shift­ing alliances with for­eign pow­ers, encour­ag­ing them to bring their armies into Italy in the papacy’s defense. That strat­e­gy was to back­fire, as for­eign invaders enriched them­selves at Italy’s expense. The result was that Italy, then a cen­ter of inter­na­tion­al finance and the arts, fell into a cen­turies-long decline. Savanarola’s dark prophe­cies were in that sense fulfilled.

Let’s hope that the same won’t one day be said of Stockman.