Today's Stories

October 16, 2008

Mike Whitney
The End of Friedmanite Economics: an Interview with Robert Pollin

Jonathan Cook
The Acre Riots

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Is Obama Playing to the Gallery? Or Has He Lost the Plot in South Asia?

Alan Maass
A Supreme Injustice

Stephen Martin
The Nourishment of Idleness: Where Has All the Money Gone?

Douglas Valentine
Why I'm Voting for Obama

October 15, 2008

Steve Conn
The Real Story of Troopergate

William P. O'Connor
The Legend of John McCain

Robert Weissman
The Partial Nationalization of US Banks: Public Ownership, But No Public Control

Jonathan M. Feldman
Before the Second Wave of Crisis: an Alternative to the Triple Failure

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Race in America: Is a Vote For Obama a Vote Against Racism?

Conn Hallinan
Targeting Unions in Colombia

Justin Podur
The Financial Economy and Real Economy

Karl Grossman
The New Nuclear Navy

Dave Lindorff
Is the Government Really Turning Socialist?

Eric Walberg
The Quiet Russian

Martha Rosenberg
Of Blood and Eggs

Uri Avnery
A Fairy Tale

Monica Benderman
No More

Website of the Day
Contractor Misconduct Database

October 14, 2008

Robert Richter
McCain: War Hero or War Criminal?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bailout and the Smell Test

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Wall Street Coup and the Bailout Scam

Steve Conn
Made in Alaska: Fear of the Fringe

P. Sainath
The Race Could be Over, But Race Isn't

Gregory Elich
How the Nobel Peace Prize Was Won

Stephen Martin
A Tectonic Shift in Hegemony at the G7

Rev. William Alberts
Don't Blink Twice

Laura Carlsen
The Fall of the Bush Dynasty Plan

Joanne Mariner
The Uighurs Come to Washington

Howard Lisnoff
Left Behind: a Biden Fundraiser and the Children of Holyoke

David Macaray
A Tale of Two Unions

Website of the Day
Six Degrees of Hank Paulson

October 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Farewell to Daniel Cassidy

Michael Hudson
Rescue for the Few, Debt Slavery for the Many

Patrick Cockburn
Pogrom Against Mosul's Christians

Chris Floyd
The God That Failed: the 30-Year Lie of the Market Cult

Fidel Castro
The Law of the Jungle: Racism, Obama and the Fall of the American Economy

Robert Weitzel
Olmert's Depths of Reality

Derek Wright
How Chrysler Killed My Uncle

Stephen Soldz
Guantánamo's SERE Standard Operating Procedures

David Michael Green
Greed is Not Good

Norman Solomon
Requiem for the Bailout: a Storyline

Charles R. Larson
Toni Morrison on Her Own Terms

Lisa Massaciuccoli
The Shoplifting Association of the Americas

Website of the Day
Arlo Guthrie: "I'm Changing My Name to Fannie Mae"

October 10 / 12, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is McCain a Lot Sicker Than We Know?

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Obama's Nuclear Ambition

Douglas Valentine
Mission CREEP: From John Mitchell to John McCain

Noam Chomsky
Exposing the Un-Democratic Face of Capitalism

Ralph Nader
The Derivatives Game

Syed Saleem Shahzad
Why the Neo-Taliban is Winning

Patrick Cockburn
War in the Time of Cholera

Paul Craig Roberts
A Possible Solution to the Economic Crisis

Mike Whitney
Run on the System

Peter Morici
The Deficit and the Damage Done

Christopher Ketcham
The End of the Economy

Stephen Martin
Shock and Awe in Economic Warfare

Chellis Glendinning
Wireless Mind, Gullible Mind

Saul Landau
All Guns, No Butter

Ahmad Faruqui
21 Days to Baghdad

Adam Turl
Sheriff Tom Dart vs. the Banksters

Serge Halimi
The Battle for the West

Anthony DiMaggio
Making a Killing: the Business of Elections

John Ross
The Sky is Falling on Mexico, Too

José M. Tirado
Meltdown in Iceland

Paul Krassner
Beat the Crowd in Denver: Cops and T-Shirts

David Macaray
Adventures in Unionism

Robert Fantina
Bankrupt and Belligerent

David Yearsley
The Playlist for Election 2008

Julian Clec'h
The Soap Washing Through Saudi Arabia

Adam Engel
Sexual Healing ... for the Planet

Phyllis Pollack
The Rolling Stones Go Home, Again

Missy Beattie
Going North: the Coming Nation of Alaska

Poets' Basement
Landau, Moser and Henson

Website of the Day
Sarah as Esther? New Video From Inside Palin's Church

October 9, 2008

Robert Bryce
From Enron to the Current Meltdown

David Vest
The Great Rescue of 2008: Could Whatever Follows Bush Be Even Worse?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Meltdown at the Pentagon

Andy Worthington
The Ordeal of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama the Subhuman

Helga Serrano /
Hector Tamayo
Ecuador Charts the Way

Dave Lindorff
When Money Flies

Mats Svensson
At the Checkpoint on the Day of Atonement

Rannie Amiri
The Time for Mordechai Vanunu is Now

Website of the Day
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

October 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Imbecilic Tedium

Linn Washington, Jr.
Palin's Racist Remark

Mike Whitney
To the Bunkers!

Deepak Tripathi
The West is Broke

George C. Wilson
Butter Over Guns? McCain and Obama on Defense Issues

Andy Worthington
Seized in Pakistan

Charles R. Larson
"I'm John McCain and I Approved This Lie"

Patrick Irelan
Ecuador's Choice

Matthew Koehler
Log, Baby, Log: Bailing Out the Timber Industry

Stanley Heller
Time to Design a New Economy

Daniel Gross
Working Class Hero: Alexandra Svoboda

Kimberly Hartke
Raw Milk and Civil Liberties

Website of the Day
Olivia Wilde Does It Early

October 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

Gary Leupp
Seven Years in Afghanistan:
From "War on Terror" to
"War of Terror"

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Final Divorce
From "All of Eretz Israel"

P. Sainath
The Cop-Out Election
Major Candidates, Congress, Press, All Fail in the Big Crisis

Peter Morici
The Dow Tanks as Bank Bailout Fails to Restore Confidence

Conn Hallinan
The Great Game in the Caucasus:
Bad Moves by Uncle Sam

Martha Rosenberg
Training America's Youth
Today a Pheasant, Tomorrow Osama

Binoy Kampmark
Let's Talk About Extinction:
CERN and Halo

October 6, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America

Mike Whitney
Still on the Edge of the Abyss

Tariq Ali
Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

Emily Horowitz
How People Tell Cops They're Guilty Even When They Aren't

Michael Hudson
What Did Jesus Say?
A Christian Perspective on the Paulson Bank Bailout

Ron Jacobs
Winter Soldiers and Washington's Wars

October 3 - 5, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Creatures of Capital

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

Saul Landau
The Chutzpah of Hank Paulson

Jonathan Cook
The Souring of a West Bank Romance: Israel's Army and Settlers Fall Out

Andy Worthington
The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials

Dave Marsh
Bono (Himself) Challenges Me to a Debate

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Using the IAEA to Spy on Iran

John Ross
Massacre in Morelia

Brian Cloughley
The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism

Wajahat Ali
Dueling Partners: an Interview with Tariq Ali on Pakistan

Robert Schwartz
A Serious Blow to the Rights of U.S. Workers: NLRB Limits Political Strikes

Alan Nasser
FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him: a Paradigm for Today's Democrats?

David Ker Thomson
The Case for Drunk Driving

Peter Morici
Gone in 30 Days: U.S. Loses 159,000 Jobs in September

William Blum
When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?

William S. Lind
War on Two Fronts: Without Railroads

Michael Donnelly
The Ghost of Gen. McClellan

Thom Rutledge
On Presidential "Rule"

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Science and the 2008 Presidential Elections: a Survey of the Candidates

Dave Lindorff
Calling the Problem Early

Cindy Ellen Hill
Waging a Sustainable Peace?

Paul Krassner
Dying to Get High: the Side Effects of Medical Marijuana

Daniel White
Vietnam's Masterspy

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Absher, Gibbons and Jenkins

Website of the Weekend
How We Lost Glen Canyon: a Legal Chronology

October 2, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Can a Bailout Succeed?

Joe Bageant
Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers: the Bailout in Plain English

Ralph Nader
Soulmates in Deregulation

Mike Whitney
Why the Bailout Stinks

Madis Senner
When Push Comes to Pull: How a Foreign Banker Invasion Sent the Markets Reeling

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress as Usual:the Crisis Will Pass, But This Bunch Will Remain the Same

William Blum
A Boy's Game: the Origins of the Financial Crisis

P. Sainath
Wall Street Transforms Presidential Race

Website of the Day
McCain's Meltdown in Des Moines

October 1 , 2008

Glen Ford
The Last Hold Up

Steven Conn
Trashing Sarah Palin: the Boomerang Effect

Alan Maass / Lee Sustar
Why Not a Bailout for the Rest of Us?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Blame Game: When Wall Street Pigs Sprout Wings

Stan Goff
How the Republicans Can Win (And Deserve It)

Adolfo Gilly
Racism, Domination and Bolivia

Rannie Amiri
Bombs in the Levant

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Recurring Myth of Peak Oil

Adam W. Parsons
Food and Markets

Dave Lindorff
Bums' Rush to the Bailout: Where are the Hearings?

Douglas Valentine
The Bush Continuity Plan?

Adrien Rain Burke
The Party's Over: an Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Beauty Pageant

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

Chris Floyd
The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic on Wall Street

Stephen Martin
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street

Deepak Tripathi
A Bitter Harvest in Afghanistan

Mark Engler
Bad Money

Jonathan Cook
The Attack on Zeev Sternhell: Has Israel Become a Breeding Ground for Jewish Settler Terrorism?

Dave Lindorff
The Power of No

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Time for a General Strike?

Ahmad Faruqui
In Cold Blood: Buried Alive in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Will the Bride Wear White? As Rome Burns, Bristol Palin Prepares to Tie the Knot with Mr. "Sex on Skates"

David Macaray
Blaming the Labor Unions

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Obama Could Have Said

Website of the Day
538: a Cognitive Map of American Politics

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

October 16, 2008

An Interview With Robert Pollin

The End of Friedmanite Economics

By MIKE WHITNEY

"We are in the midst of a major historic turning point, equivalent to the emergence of neoliberalism under Thatcher and Reagan"

– Robert Pollin

Robert Pollin is a Professor of Economics and founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Among his recent books are Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of the Global Austerity (Verso, 2003) and (with Stephanie Luce) The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy (The New Press, 1998).

Mike Whitney: On Monday, the stock market recorded the biggest one-day gain in history on news that the G-7 had settled on a plan to recapitalize the banking system. The Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BOE)  all agreed to make direct capital injections into "systemically important" banks so they could resume lending and reduce stress in the credit markets. They also decided to insure deposits and to guarantee interbank lending. Do you think that these unprecedented steps will be enough to avert a meltdown of the financial system?

Robert Pollin:  Of course, by Tuesday, the Dow fell again by over 733 points.  Meanwhile, the Nikkei in Japan fell by 10 per cent on Wednesday.  So, thus far, the answer to whether these steps are enough, on their own, to avert a meltdown is a resounding “no.”  At the same time, to be fair, these measures have yet to have any real effect on banks’ balance sheets.  Thus far, the stock markets are only responding to their own guesses as to what benefits, if any, these measures will have on stabilizing the balance sheets of financial institutions.

But there is another element that came into play especially over the past day.  That is the reality within financial markets that the economic crisis has spread beyond Wall Street itself.  It is now clearly becoming a crisis -- a recession or depression, choose your own term -- spreading into the realm of jobs, incomes, public sector budgets, and private non-financial profits as well.  This means that averting a meltdown of the financial system will also require a massive stimulus of the non-financial side of the economy.  We haven’t heard yet about any significant plans along these lines.

How much of the present crisis can be blamed on ideology? Do you think that the ideas of Milton Friedman or the 30 year-long bias towards market fundamentalism contributed to the present troubles in the financial markets? Is this the end of the laissez-faire, free market "trickle down" era?

Robert Pollin:This is certainly a huge crisis for Friedmanite economics and neoliberalism more generally—which all along was the ideology that touted free markets and deregulation to privatize profits, but to come begging for government bailouts when the inevitable crises emerged.  This is certainly not the first financial crisis under the neoliberal regime.  There have been regular severe crises since the 1987 Wall Street crash.  These crises were all quelled through Federal Reserve/Treasury bailout operations.  Whether or not this crisis will mean the end of the neoliberal era will depend on political mobilization — specifically, how successful the left will be in building coalitions behind an agenda that combines egalitarianism with a stable financial system.  I would say this:  if the left is unable to defeat neoliberalism now, and build some version of social democracy or “leashed capitalism”, then we will never do it.

Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson's $700 billion bailout plan was opposed by over 200 economists. The vast majority of the economists supported the idea of capital injections into struggling banks rather than buying up their toxic mortgage-backed assets. EU nations settled on the capital injections plan, too. On Monday, according to the New York Times, Paulson met with a group of CEOs from the country's largest banks and announced his plans for distributing the first $250 billion provided by Congress.  

Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase were told they would each get $25 billion; Bank of America and Wells Fargo, $20 billion each (plus an additional $5 billion for their recent acquisitions); Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, $10 billion each, with Bank of New York Mellon and State Street each receiving $2 to 3 billion. Wells Fargo will get $5 billion for its acquisition of Wachovia, and Bank of America the same for amount for its purchase of Merrill Lynch.

Half of the money allocated by Congress is being given to many of the same Wall Street giants that are directly responsible for the current implosion of the financial system. Doesn't this confirm our worst fears about Paulson, that he is merely a banking oligarch who serves the interests of the financial industry? 

Robert Pollin: Paulson is a Wall Street man—and Goldman Sachs man, more specifically—through and through.  There was never any doubt about that.  He will always do his best to serve his Wall Street constituency.  At the same time, this constituency has now been discredited to an extent unprecedented since the 1930s.  So again, it will be a matter of how well the left mobilizes its forces to push for a different agenda with the Treasury and other major economic policy-making institutions.  It will not be easy, and it won’t happen overnight.  But now is most emphatically the time to make serious advances in building a serious alternative agenda.

Many pundits now point to the Lehman Brothers default as the main cause for last week's turbulence in the stock market. Can you explain how one bank can have such a dramatic effect on global stocks and credit markets? 

Henry Paulson made the decision for one day—and one day only—to try free market capitalism during a financial crisis.  That is, he and Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke decided that if Lehman Brothers can’t make it on its own, then, according to the logic of free market capitalism, they should be allowed to fail.  But once they made that decision, such  deep panic ensued, on Wall Street and financial markets throughout the globe, that they backed off literally the next day, when the bailed out AIG Insurance.

Under neoliberalism, financial market players have become accustomed to do as they wish when the market is going up, but to get bailed out when the market is going down — privatization of profits and socialization of losses.  The collapse of Lehman sent the signal that the old rules of neoliberalism may no longer apply — that market losers may really go down hard, as the true-blue free market model—as opposed to the neoliberal model—says they must.  That’s why Lehman’s failure caused such vast  panic.

Do you find it surprising that foreign investors and central banks have not sued the various US brokerage houses for selling them complex securities that were toxic? Why hasn't the ECB or the BOE demanded that the US buy-back this fraudulent mortgage-backed garbage or threaten to boycott US financial products?

Robert Pollin: We have to be clear on what we mean by “foreign” investors.  They may well be physically living in other countries, and their institutions may have business charters outside the U.S.  But they are heavily integrated into the U.S. economy.  Neither the European Central Bank (ECB) nor the Bank of England (BOE) want to see either Wall Street or the dollar collapse.  They themselves would also go down in the event of a global depression.  So they are not about to call for boycotts of the U.S. economy.  The Europeans may have some harsh words for the US players behind closed doors.  On the other hand, nobody forced the Europeans to buy mortgage-backed securities.  They also would hardly want to claim to be untutored innocents playing above their heads in financial markets.  They, like the Americans, had every opportunity to think about whether mortgage-backed securities were good ways to make big-time profits.  They all decided to go for it.

The Obama campaign has reportedly received $10 million from Wall Street contributors, whereas, the McCain campaign has taken in $7 million. Does this explain why no one in Congress from either party is demanding that Glass Steagall be restored, or that all derivatives contracts be put under government regulation, or that all financial institutions (that pose a danger to the overall system) maintain a capital cushion of 12 per cent? Has the big money which flows into the political system made it impossible for congress to do the work of the people? 

Robert Pollin: The big money flowing into Obama, and to Democrats more generally, certainly will make it more difficult for our elected officials to do the work of the people.  But here again, Wall Street has now been discredited to a degree unprecedented since the 1930s.  That should give the left serious political leverage, even while fully recognizing the influence that big money will continue to play with both the Democrats and Republicans.  And we don’t need to go back to Glass Steagall specifically—the financial regulatory system that came out of the wreckage of the 1930s Depression.  We need to recreate its basic principles and then some — that is, to create a regulatory system focused on financial stability and channeling credit to socially productive activities, like affordable housing, job expansion, and building a clean energy economy.  Does that mean that the financial system should be state owned?  Certainly there is a case for at least partial ownership.  That is hardly an outlandish crazy-left idea now, since George Bush and Henry Paulson have made this a cornerstone of the Republican-led bailout plan.  But the real issue — whether it be through public or private ownership or some mix — is to move financial institutions and markets in the direction of egalitarianism.  That won’t occur automatically by any means even with publicly owned financial institutions.
 
So far, foreign flows into US Treasuries (to cover our $700 billion current account deficit) have not been a big problem. As the Federal Reserve and the Treasury expand their balance sheets to provide a backstop for the financial system--as well as emergency fiscal stimulus for maxed-out consumers--we could be facing a funding crisis as severe as anytime in history. In July, the purchases of US Treasuries hit a record low of roughly $6 billion leaving a shortfall of $50 billion. Now that we are headed into a global recession, do you think that foreign central banks will begin cutting back on their purchases of US debt? What effects will this have on the US economy (and the dollar)? Will interest rates rise sharply?

Robert Pollin: I think U.S. Treasuries are now, and will remain for some time, the single safest, and most desirable, financial instrument in the global financial system.  I don’t think foreigners will shift dramatically away from Treasuries, though they may do so modestly.  At the same time, U.S. investors will continue to clamor for Treasuries as opposed to buying stocks, bonds issued by private companies, and derivatives.  This will push down the interest rates on Treasuries.  However, other interest rates will continue to be very high.  The growing disparity between the low Treasury rates and the high rates on private bonds, including those of AAA corporations, reflects the very high level of risk—the “risk premium—that investors are now attaching to any security that doesn’t have the full backing of the U.S. government.

In 1967 former Fed chair Alan Greenspan published an essay titled "Gold and Economic Freedom" which could have been written by a Libertarian like Ron Paul. The article proves that Greenspan has a good grasp of how low interest rates and credit expansion lead to disaster. In fact, he even blames the Great Depression on loose monetary policies. Here is a particularly revealing excerpt: 

"When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve's attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it was politically unpalatable). The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain's gold loss and avoid the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates.

The "Fed" succeeded; it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market -- triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed.... The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930's....The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit..." (Gold and Economic Freedom, Alan Greenspan)

What role did Greenspan play in the current financial crisis and why did Greenspan leave interest rates below the rate of inflation for 31 months when he knew it would lead to catastrophe?

Robert Pollin: I don’t agree that low interest rates and credit expansion lead to disaster.  They only lead to disaster in an unregulated financial system, in which credit flows overwhelmingly support speculation as opposed to investments in productive activities that create useful things for people, like schools, housing and public infrastructure.  Indeed, I strongly support an extensive system of government loan guarantees—i.e. credit risk insurance—to support private investments in retrofitting buildings and affordable housing.  This will maintain low interest rates to finance these activities, and channel large amounts of cheap credit into these areas. 

Greenspan himself is as responsible for this current financial disaster as anyone.  His only competitors on this score are former Republican Senator and top McCain advisor Phil Gramm and former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.  They all were relentless cheerleaders for financial deregulation—Democrats and Republicans alike.  They were spouting nonsense about the virtues of unregulated financial markets at least since the 1980s.

In "Imperialism is the Highest Stage of Capitalism", Vladimir Lenin says: "The development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still "reigns" and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the "geniuses" of financial manipulation. At the basis of these manipulations and swindles lies socialized production; but the immense progress of mankind, which achieved this socialization, goes to benefit... the speculators."

Despite the failures of the Soviet Union, is there anything in the analysis of Marx or Lenin that can help us to better understand this present phase of American-style capitalism?

Robert Pollin: This is a very keen observation by Lenin—one among many, many others.  As for Marx, he remains, in my view, the single most insightful thinker in history on the operations of a capitalist economy.  This includes his voluminous writings on the nature of financial markets, which are full of tremendous insights.  And remember, he was doing this writing 150 years ago, when he had very little to grab onto as he attempted to discern the nature of capitalism.

That doesn’t mean that I agree with everything Marx says.  I also don’t see much point in assigning labels—Marxist or otherwise—to people.  This is mostly a barrier to clear, straightforward thinking that might also someone be politically useful.  And finally, in my opinion, there is a huge amount important thinking in Marx as to what is wrong with capitalism, but not very much about what to do about it.  As such, in figuring out where we go from here, we are really on our own.  There’s not much point in trying to figure out what Marx would propose to do in our present situation.  We will never know that; and even if we did know, it would still be up to us to figure out whether Marx was making any sense.  Remember that Marx himself once said, in exasperation at his dogmatic followers, that “I am not a Marxist.”

Liberals and progressives in the US seem much more focused on social issues than economic ones. Only recently, have they become more aware of the growing polarization between rich and poor and the inherent shortcomings of this crisis-prone, bubble-generating, wealth-shifting system. As the financial crisis spreads into the real economy triggering increasing unemployment, falling demand, tightening credit and soaring foreclosures; there will probably be many opportunities for change. Do you foresee a rise in "issue-oriented" populist movements or, maybe, a third political party? What are the immediate economic goals that progressives should pursue?

Robert Pollin: I do think we are in the midst of a major historic turning point, equivalent to the 1930s New Deal, or the emergence in 1979/80 of full-tilt neoliberalism under Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the U.S.  It seems clear that the economic agenda will rise to the top of the heap as a focus of concern for the left.  This is not to denigrate other issues, such as the environment, anti-imperialism, racism, or sexism.  But I think we will now be able to start seeing more clearly the connections between a critique of neoliberal capitalism and these other arenas of social and political struggle.  For example, with the environment, it was only a year or so ago that the conventional wisdom held firmly that we could either have a clean environment, or a growing economy with an abundance of good jobs, but we couldn’t possibly have both.   Trade-offs such as this were inevitable.  You were simply a confused, mushy thinker if you didn’t understand this.  It is now becoming clear that building a clean energy economy—and by this I mean a zero fossil fuel driven economy, with no “clean coal” and no nukes—can also be the engine to build a full employment economy as well as help construct a stable financial system.

Of course, to put such an agenda in place will mean treading through multiple political minefields.  Should people work within their communities alone?  In unions?  Form a left caucus within the Democratic Party?  For environmental justice groups?  Keep trying to build third parties?  I think all these approaches have merit, and that we on the left should try all of them.  We should also have enough humility to acknowledge that none of us really knows what will work best under any given set of circumstances.  Let’s try a lot of things, keep learning, and stay open-minded.  And I would emphasize one other thing.  During the 1968 uprising in France, one of the most bracing slogans to have emerged out that struggle was “Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible.”  I am more inclined to embrace its mirror image as a guide for moving forward.  That is, “Be Utopian, Demand the Realistic.”

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state and can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

Now Available from CounterPunch Books!

The Inside Story of the Shannon Five's Smashing Victory Over the
Bush War Machine
By Harry Browne

Born Under a Bad Sky:
Notes from the Dark Side
of the Earth
By Jeffrey St. Clair

Buy End Times Now!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Buy!

Click Here to Order!

Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont