A spate of profiles of Timothy Geithner hit the news recently, from Vogue to the Atlantic and several places in between. Most of them seem to sound an optimistic note on the Treasury Secretary and former chief of the New York Federal Reserve, but we ask a couple of experts what's really going on with the economy--and if Geithner deserves any of that praise.
Robert Johnson is the director of economic policy at the Roosevelt Institute and the former chief economist for the Senate Banking Committee. Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America. They both have some words for the Democrats on what happens if don't wise up.
Good catches, Laura. What is ‘saving the economy’? Is it saving capitalism or saving working class people from increasing poverty and the demise of any future for their children? We need to know if there is a way to save the economy in a way that actually brings up working people. Is that the so-called new new deal, more regulation, and health care for all; or cosmetics to help consumer confidence and more corporate welfare? Washington doesn’t have straight talk, good to know some in the media still do.
By criticiseafterdinner on March 16th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Finally someone brings up campaign finance. When will we realize that the guys running this country, on behalf of the corporate shareholders who own this place, are not going to give anything to the American people. All of this is symptom of the slow secretive merger between corporate controlling shareholders, their interlocking Boards of Directors, and legislative process, and power over the Presidency and administrative posts in the US government. They have no intention of handing power over their money to a democracy! They saved themselves from that in the 1970s, and have been on a straight-line ever since.
We’ve got to get that through out thick skulls! To say they have “lost the plot” or “never learned” is absolutely not true. They don’t care what happens in the next election. These powers will be more than happy for Tea Party to win seats and take us even further to the right. Then people like Grittv will get shut down, and people with ideas like these will get harassed by a secret police.
This is the outcome they don’t mind taking us to, and controlling corporate shareholders lose nothing! Obama is not FDR strong-arming them into a New Deal reform, letting them know a Communist Revolution will take their property otherwise. Their counterparts in Britain were more than happy to let “laissez-faire” do nothing for the unemployment crisis in the Depression. Solution to that turned out to be WWII, which was great for their moribund factories! That is fine with them. They even sat around or even loaned money so German corporations could build their war machine. How many of them got killed in the Blitz?
You guys need to look at the 30 yrs of fixes to block this constitution that got us to the state we’re in. Only Robert Johnson puts his finger on it! Bravo!
By Planckbrandt on March 16th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
[...] video detailing the problems but most importantly offering [...]
By Too Big To Fail: Whose Waterloo Will That Be? - Politics and Other Controversies -Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Conservatives, Liberals, Third Parties, Left-Wing, Right-Wing, Congress, President - City-Data Forum on March 23rd, 2010 at 10:14 pm