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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (160342)	2/10/2009 9:38:37 PM
From: Asymmetric	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 362563

Excerpts from Naomi Klein Interview: "Q: What do you make of this group of corporatists and Clinton retreads that are surrounding Obama on the economic front? Klein: I would say it’s disappointing, but we don’t have a right to be disappointed. This is who surrounded Obama during the whole campaign. He’s been taking advice from Larry Summers and Bob Rubin and Paul Volcker all along. He opened up the circle a little bit to people like Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Reich. But to me it’s just shocking—and I know we shouldn’t be shocked—that Larry Summers is [a leading economic adviser]. And even more shocking to me—and I don’t know how to say this in a politically correct way—is that the main thing that people are objecting to is what Summers said at Harvard about women’s aptitude in science. It was an offensive thing to say, and he lost his job for it. But that, to me, is so much less of a crime than the fact that he was the main architect in Treasury for the shock therapy in Russia that impoverished sixty million people—and did a lot of harm to women. He cheer led Boris Yeltsin as he attacked the Russian parliament, dissolved democracy, and suspended the constitution. And Summers played a key role in the shock therapy in Thailand and South Korea in 1998. So he has a dismal track record. He was standing by Clinton’s side when Clinton abolished Glass-Steagall, which is the key piece of legislation that would have prevented the financial crisis we’re in now. He fought tooth and nail alongside Alan Greenspan to prevent the derivatives industry from being regulated. The reason I’m so upset about this is because we’re paying the price for the deliberate amnesia that so many of us signed onto during the Bush years, where we were allowed to say whatever we wanted that was critical about U.S. policy, even about the free market, if we said it all started in 2001, when Bush took office. Obama’s campaign was the ultimate example of this. “This crisis that we’re seeing is the result of the deregulation policies that have been in place for the past eight years.” No, not eight years! The key pieces of legislation were passed under Clinton. We all turned the other way, and we allowed these lies to be repeated. And we thought, we’ll just get rid of Bush, and let them have their strategy. Well, this is the result of that strategy: Larry Summers is treated like the savior of the economy. Q: Obama is an intelligent man. Surely, he knows this litany. So why do you think he is lining up with people like Summers? Is that where he is politically? Or is he trying to please the pundits and the power establishment? Is he trying to please Wall Street? Klein: Politicians don’t take the kind of bold risks that we really need in this moment. People are talking about the need for a green New Deal, and comparing this moment to the early 1930s, and they’re right. But what led FDR to take those risks and be that bold was that he was under enormous pressure from grassroots movements from below. In the absence of that, Obama’s under tremendous pressure not to shock the system. I don’t think we should play down the fact that the market plunged after Obama was elected, and that’s incredibly traumatic for a leader. In a time of market volatility, there are very few political leaders who can withstand watching that. If he were to have appointed Joseph Stiglitz as Treasury Secretary, the market would have plummeted. The market wants continuity. The market wants to know it’s the same club. Q: By the way, how did you react to Alan Greenspan’s confession that he’d found a flaw in his theory? Klein: This is an amazing moment for the left, for progressives. Because the free market ideology is truly in crisis. Greenspan said he believed the banking industry could self-regulate because trust and reputation are important assets in the market. What he didn’t calculate for is just greed. That’s a completely implausible story. This is a man who was an Ayn Rand protégé. His whole philosophy was that greed is the primary driving force in all of humanity. So how could Alan Greenspan be surprised by greed? The prime regulator of the global economy for eighteen years did not calculate that bankers might be greedy?" - A. (PS: Geithner and Summers are the wrong choices.)

To: stockman_scott who wrote (160342)	2/11/2009 9:28:22 AM
From: Ron	Respond to of 362563

She's good. Daddy Warbucks, indeed: "Klein: Election night I was walking to the apartment where my husband stays, and passing by this really elite, storied club. I always look in the window. It looks like the kind of place where Central American coups are plotted. On this night, a half hour after the results had been announced, there were these two African American men high-fiving each other outside the club. One of them was the doorman for this private club, and the other was a chauffeur for one of the club members. As I was passing, one of the club members came out looking just miserable. He was sort of a Daddy Warbucks character, with just an absolute scowl on his face. I watched these two men who had just been celebrating go back to their posts. One of them opened the door of the club, and the other opened the door of the waiting limousine. And they shared this smile. I just thought: Wow! This is a night where the people holding the doors are having a way better time than the people walking through the doors. And that’s pretty rare in that city."