A lot has been written and voiced about on television about how few economic policy differences there appear to be among the Democratic presidential candidates and about how the race for the Democratic nomination is largely about personality, style and campaign funds. This isn't the case at all, and while there are certainly some common elements and shared views, the differences that do exist are significant and worth noting.
Just today, Steven Rattner, one of Senator Clinton's senior economic advisors (and also her national finance co-chair), in a piece entitled "Let's Get Real About the Economy", said that right now our economy is confronting nothing more "than a cyclical purging of excesses". If this op-ed accurately reflects the Clinton camp's view of the current state of the U.S. economy, then their rose colored glasses are pretty seriously fogged up.
Let's look at the facts since Mr. Bush became president:
In addition to not recognizing a recession even when it hits the nation smack in the face, the Clinton economic team, in this op-ed, has the temerity to characterize people who are demanding substantive responses to these serious ills in our economy as simply a "Greek chorus of perennial economic pessimists". They also declare that the financial markets have almost no blame for the credit and mortgage crises we are in, and that criticisms of the nation's financial policy makers are nothing more than uncalled-for "diatribes".
And so at the very time when we need to be focusing on just how much damage the all-powerful debt industry geniuses and their self-serving schemes have done to the economy, all of the Republican candidates and now even some Democrats have made it clear that they want to continue the deregulatory legacy that was started by Hoover, revived by Reagan, largely unchallenged by President Clinton, and mastered by George W. Bush.
The reality is that many of the terrible things that are happening in the financial markets and to our economy are the result of just one thing -- the gutting of the consumer and worker protections that for decades kept corporate insiders from ruining the American Dream for the rest of us.
With the blatant support of many in both political parties, the far-right economic policies that were last advocated by Herbert Hoover in the 1920s have been resurrected, and just like then they are failing miserably. Once again, Wall Street is having its way with Main Street, and economic security for ordinary Americans is plummeting so that insiders can get rich.
In contrast, every day since he started his campaign to become president, John Edwards has said that what we need is a fundamental change in direction. And that we need economic policies based on the clear and simple principle that government is the people's servant, and that its job is to provide -- without compromise -- opportunity and certain basic rights and protections for all of us.
Like his two opponents for the Democratic nomination, John Edwards has specific plans for short-term economic stimulus, for resolving the mortgage crisis, and for reining in credit card abuses. But unlike Mr. Bush's stimulus plan, which Senator Clinton's surrogate calls a "remarkable agreement", John Edwards' plan does a much better job of addressing the real problems of America's middle class.
John Edwards believes that it is a particularly serious mistake to put a $50 billion business tax giveaway ahead of steps to extend unemployment insurance and food stamps, help the states out of their current budget crises, better assist families facing foreclosure, and build a jobs-based infrastructure for the new energy economy. These are the steps which would better help the people suffering the most from the weak job market, accelerate our economic recovery, and create immediate new jobs across the land to replace some of those which have been unfairly lost.
But in addition to short-term economic stimulus, John Edwards believes that we need to do much more, and that we need to do it quickly. He has again called on President Bush, on our financial regulatory agencies, and on Congress to bring back those consumer and worker protections that have been ripped apart by selfish economic policies and by the too-friendly-to-big-business practices of the last 10 to 15 years. And he has again called on them to immediately start to address the massive trade imbalances which, one way or another, are crushing most American workers and families, causing wages to stagnate like almost never before, and driving literally millions of good-paying, high-quality jobs overseas.
These are the facts of the "real economy", this is no "cyclical purging of excesses", and it would be nice if Senator Clinton's economic team would get real about all of this.
Leo Hindery, Jr. is Senior Economic Policy Advisor for Senator John Edwards. He is managing partner of the media private equity firm InterMedia Partners.
Keynes of Friedman?
That simple question sums up what we really need to know the most about the candidates.
I hope whoever gets the Dem nomination remembers to make use (and make a place for) such a great individual.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA24Ak04.html
Our economy now survives by shock and plunder, or the generosity of undemocratic regimes, ones that typically rely on US military or financial support to retain power.
The massive fraud and theft by unregulated financiers is but one facet of an economy which now serves a corporate-military master.
Please, despite what others may claim, let us not also suggest that the US economy can be righted simply by some better financial oversight of the government.
From Rattner's piece:
"This package need not be the end of our efforts to address our economic challenges, particularly the plight of homeowners. While the proposed legislation offers some hope for easing the mortgage crunch, more should be done.
In particular, we should reach back to the Depression and consider resurrecting the Home Owners' Loan Corporation. Created in 1933, that long-forgotten agency bought defaulted mortgages from savings-and-loan institutions at discounts to face value and then negotiated new terms with stretched homeowners to avoid foreclosure. By the time it finally closed down in 1951, the HOLC had aided one in five mortgaged dwellings and had even turned a small profit for the government.
We also should reform the patchwork of government regulators overseeing our financial institutions, to provide more coherence. While Alan Greenspan's Fed shouldn't be blamed for keeping rates low for too long (would we really have wanted slower growth these last five years?), it did ignore its responsibilities to regulate predatory lending. (Too much Ayn Rand and not enough FDR.) Additionally, with the internalization of financial markets, attention should be paid to Mr. Soros's excellent suggestion of more globally coordinated regulation.
Ironically, America's most serious economic challenges are almost surely the ones currently receiving the least amount of attention. Let's not forget that income inequality has risen to record and unacceptable heights. Nor should we lose sight of vast unfunded future obligations -- $50 trillion, by some government estimates -- for social welfare programs, particularly Medicare. Finally, as presidential candidates on the campaign trail remind us regularly, we have important unmet needs, ranging from health care to infrastructure"
Of course I'd prefer to believe he won't need them, but it may be necessary to beat the relentless, win-at-any-cost Clinton Machine.
What do you think about the attacks on you over at waxingamerica.com by the Paul Soglin blog? Soglin is the former Mayer of Madison, WI. A fine man with admirable political views.
It makes me ask: if an individual doesn't have the money to hire one worker, WHERE does the federal government find the funds for a million? Or more.
"Create jobs" OK, where's the payroll?
The main question I keep asking myself is, if progressives hate privatization, why in HELL do you put with the Federal Reserve System? Why put up with incompetent banks and Wall St. stupidity when all should sink beneath the waves?
A real free-market system would insist on that. But it has never happened in America, from the time of the Bank of North American, through the Bank of the United States and the Second Bank of the United states, all chartered. And the Fed that was snuck in on Dec. 23, 1913 was supposed to stablise the economy. Oops.
But you probably don't know the easy credit of 1920 that caused the 'irrational exuberance' of the stock market -- same as the easy credit that led to the housing bubble, was the PROBLEM!
In 1920, the scheme was to prop the British pound, after the economic decline of WW1.
Every time there is a major problem, the government steps in to protect the banks, and the people get screwed. Why? How much of the 'freeze' has trickled down to the people facing foreclosure? Maybe a trillion dollars thrown into the system from the Fed, the ECB and the BoE has hardly made a dent. And who pays for that? Guess!
The stock market is so far removed from reality, it has nothing to do with the real economy. All the 'structured investment vehicles' are smoke & mirrors, always were, why save those fools? And if so-called deregulation is the problem, there's always common fraud investigations, indictments, and prison sentences. Couldn't happen to more deserving folk.
Edwards is a less credible prospect than Obama to lead the struggle to protect middle and lower class interests. Obama's life till recently has been lived there. His career is testimony to his commitment to middle and lower class concerns.
Though there are significant contradictions in Edwards' career concerning class issues, an Obama-Edwards ticket would give the Democrats a commanding edge with middle and lower class voters.
In a sense it is a matter of time before the American people realize that a system that has failed as often as has unregulated capitalism will fail again. Hmmm.
In a sense it is a miracle of the power of mass media manipulation that so many people could be led to the edge of the precipice and encouraged to jump off for the sake of the wealth of 1% of the population. More like it.
In a sense it is remarkable that while the old nations of Europe and even the leaders of the economic Asian Tigers understand and take advantage of the naiveté of the American people for a share of the butchering of the failing experiment in Democracy that once enjoyed the envy of all for its political and economic egalitarianism, the American people are still mystified into inactivity by a myth, popularized by an actor. Very close.
It is a monument to greed that it will have been the one power in the cosmos that so corrupted us all that we could not stop our own destruction. Exactly.