Liberal William Greider spars a lot with his good friend Liberal Paul Krugman.
Greider said to Amy Goodman ( of Democracy Now ) about the American Economy : "The system is not just broken and not just injured; it is collapsed. And as long as the government continues to play putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, I think it will fail. That’s not an ideological statement. It’s just—I think it’s the reality".
The Nation
Obama Backs Off Social Security, Medicare Reform
September 15, 2011
Obama Backs Off Social Security, Medicare Reform
By William Greider
From Wikipedia :
His most recent (2009) book is Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (And Redeeming Promise) Of Our Country. Before that he published The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy, which explores the basis and history of the corporation and how people can influence further development of it. He is national affairs correspondent for The Nation,[1] a liberal political weekly. Prior to his work at The Nation, he wrote for Rolling Stone magazine during the 1980s and 1990s, and worked as an on-air correspondent for Frontline on PBS.
Greider also wrote a major book on globalization -- One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (1997) -- which described the underlying vulnerabilities and inequities of the global economy. The credibility of this work was heavily criticized by economist Paul Krugman, who claimed that Greider ignored the fallacies of composition that run rampant in the work, misinterpreted facts (some of which were incorrect), and misled readers with false assumptions - all possibly due to his lack of consultation with economists. In his latest, Come Home, America (2009), Greider claims that Krugman has changed his views over the last decade to move closer to Greider's.
Greider's most powerful and far-reaching work is Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (1987), which chronicles the history of the Federal Reserve, and especially from 1979 to 1987 under the chairmanship of Paul Volcker, during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
Obama Backs Off Social Security, Medicare Reform
Some excerpts :
Congressional Democrats have felt a stabbing pain in the back whenever the president talked about “entitlement reform.” The Dems hope to run against the Republicans next year on those very issues—defending the great liberal social programs against cut-throat Republicans. Obama was threatening to throw away their best cards. They don’t have many others, given the stalled economy, flirting with recession. The president’s new job-creating plan is thin gruel. Even if Republicans allowed the legislation to pass (which they won’t), it won’t do much to stop the bleeding. Most Democrats pretend to be thrilled anyway. Privately, they have a scary, sinking feeling.
Life is unfair, so is politics. What happened to Jimmy Carter in the spring of 1980 was that fellow many Democrats concluded his presidency was doomed and so they concentrated on personal survival. Many ran campaigns that emphasized their own accomplishments and never mentioned his name. Others actively ran against their own incumbent president (with limited results). Carter’s people kept saying, not to worry—the people will never elect a right-wing kook like Ronald Reagan as their president. The rest is history, as they say.
Obama is not helpless. He could change the game again and more dramatically by employing the presidency’s vast discretion to launch new government policies on his own, while running hard against the “party of no.” It’s true neither Obama nor his advisers are inclined toward aggressive unilateral action, and they are fast running out of time. But other Democrats should keep banging on him, less politely and more publicly than they have so far. Brooklyn’s Ninth District might be his last wake-up call.
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