“Yet what is most interesting about Greenspan's story is what it reveals about the ambiguous role of ideas in the free-market crusade.”

This is elitist nonsense. As I’ve said before…

However flawed, unjust, etc – “capitalism” does not exist. By definition, “capitalism” would require mass free markets in thought and commerce that exist nowhere in the west. Regardless – Naomi Klein and the MSM beat that old status quo drum that says anything from crony to “disaster capitalism” do exist. And it appears this is done to distract from the very real monopoly crypto-Fascist system that leeches the west and the globe like a bloodsucker.

That would be the hands-on system gloated over by puffed up poseurs as in Sir Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan. For those unaware, Sir “Bubbles” was not “head of the Federal Reserve” as Naomi Klein states but a tinhorn front man for the usual suspects (monopolist corporate parasites would do for a description here).

NOTE: Sir “Bubbles” was knighted by the Queen of England at the direction of multinational oligarchs for faithfully pretending to baby-sit an unconstitutional private bank monopoly. One better known as the “Federal Reserve” Corp that was never federal and has minus no reserves. A criminal Ponzi sham.

Now why would Naomi Klein and most of the so-called “left” beat a red herring MSM drum on “capitalism” vs the downtrodden if that “debate” is a complete monopoly distraction?

Makes one wonder…

Here’s a Wikipedia definition of democratic socialism (or variations thereof) Naomi Klein and so many others champion:

“Socialism is based on the idea that the economy and means of production should be in the hands of ordinary working people, or in older terminology the ‘working class’.”

Not bad. Except for the part about who gets to decide what “ordinary people” are and who the “working class” is. (Lots of other messy details as well)

Here’s my home-grown definition of the practical monopoly corporate crime state (crypto-Fascism) that actually rules the west and bulk of the world:

“Crypto-Fascism is based on the idea that the economy and means of production should be in the hands of elite monopoly parasites, or in older terminology the ‘criminal robber barons’.”

Not much difference but for a few key words. Of course, those words make all the difference there is.

A monopoly planned and privately rigged economy is a license to steal and murder at will. Control the money and you control virtually everything including war and peace. EVERYTHING.

And keeping real debate about who and what actually rigs the system we live under out of the public square seems a full time occupation for monopoly corporate media.

Small wonder?

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Yes, of course, Greenspan believes that the libertarian doctrine is moral. He has on his side no less than Immanuel Kant, whose Categorical Imperative equates the good with doing only what we would have everyone do.

The rich believe that everyone wants to be rich. Even the poor treasure the opportunity to Get Rich or Die. So we now have lotteries and casino gambling on a wide scale. However, public education and consumer protection must fend for themselves as best they can.

In fact, philosophical ethics has no successful suggestions for distributive justice. On the one hand, that means that not even a theoretical system can claim ethical answers. But it also means that no theoretical basis exists to justify inequalities.

Greenspan’s claim is that capitalism has generated enormous wealth. It is true that such resources when pooled allow projects of enormous size to exist. Think of Big Pharma’s justification for its high prices and profits; they allow research on a vast scale and hope for better medicines.

Yet that’s also just another excuse for waste on an enormous scale. Which generates for me the litmus test for an economic system. Show me one that preserves the planet. It is total stupidity to foul our nest. Neither capitalism nor communism nor socialism nor mixed economies pass the test. Greenspan asks that you show him a better way rather than just nit picking capitalism’s mistakes. The future of our species depends on finding a better way.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

In this economy trickle only goes up.
The only thing going down is tinkle.

Tinkle Down
Trickle Up

Snarky yes. But also a truth across the ages of class suppression (a class war it isn't, too much power differential). It is the difference between Earners and Takers. Those of us who really earn our living and those with the positions to take it from us. Or, those who are offered some sort of income in exchange for giving their lives in labor versus those who distribute and assign where the money goes.

The very idea that the way a business works and serves (read mom-and-pop types) is foreign to capitalists as we see them today. There is no investment in the business itself or the livelihood of those in the business, only an investment in money and money return. No concept of a commons, only individuals.

BTW: I'm not sure how Klein means "Rand is simply pulped-up Adam Smith." My feeling is that the real Smith would have more in agreement with Karl Marx (surprises me too!) than Ayn Rand (unlike the Smith version claimed by today's crop of me-only, who cares-about-the-future or the commons, capitalists).

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Naomi, Channing, et al

> "Perhaps the true purpose of the entire literature of trickle-down theory is to liberate entrepreneurs to pursue their narrowest advantage while claiming global altruistic motives -- not so much an economic philosophy as an elaborate, retroactive rationale" <

Would this be like conjoining the misconduct of the FBI's counter intelligence program (sanctioning actions with the banner of "national security") with the bureaucratic greed for dominance, (no correlating authority), between the government agencies like; the FBI, CIA, CID and NSA etc... and then attributing the collective ineptitudes to a 9/11 conspiracy theory?

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Of course, all ideology is a cognitive rationalization of deeper neurological impulses. For a theory on the neural underlayment of socioeconomic selfishness see www.democraticcritique.us. Capitalism provides a path for gaining private power against one's private fears. And by the way, the factors that achieve economic productivity-organized labor, natural resources, technology, capital- do not require the private ownership of the capital component. What is required is non-selfish leadership.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

”They cannot only be driven by greed and power. They must be driven by something higher. What?" "What about a belief that they are building a better world?" A definitive answer would require reading the minds of men like Dick Cheney and Paul Bremer, so I tend to dodge.

No, you cop out. Do you want to know how to read a mind? Read the body – the behavior, the words spoken and written, the deeds done. If it can only be explained by one mindset, you’ve read the mind. Let me help. No, the people who make policy do not care about a better world, just a more powerful personal empire. They are the liars. Then there are the myriad believers who aren’t on the inside and don’t have power or make policy. They are the duped. They are not lying. They’re the ones who often call themselves ditto heads, which, to me, is a riot. Couldn’t agree more.

But let’s get over the politeness thing. These are liars. Don’t want to be called a liar? Don’t lie! Or, lie and get caught, and be called a liar. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who thinks that the Republicans might be sincere at this late date and following all of this evidence of malice should never vote again. This is not incompetence. This is antisocial behavior wrapped in lies. Nothing else.

”Alan Greenspan. The man who bit his tongue for eighteen years as head of the Federal Reserve was finally going to tell the world what he really believed.”.

Too late, you piece of shit. You took public dollars and lied to the public – even worked against our interests. That makes you a liar and a fraud, hardly credentials for a book worth reading. And if it turns out that you wanted to tell all along, add coward to the list.

Look for the avalanche of conscience-washing revisionism to come as these rats bail out on the sinking Republican ship of state and try to redeem their legacies and assuage their trace levels of guilt by distancing themselves from the horror that they knowingly and willingly helped create.

F%$K you, Alan Greenspan. You’ll get no absolution here. And the record will show that you, like most of your colleagues, lived under a rock, and lacked in character, compassion and courage.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Greenspan and the New York Times picked Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged as "one of the most influential business books ever written."

A Financial Times survey (expert's opinions and article) comes up with 5 other choices:

Barbarians at the Gate (Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, 1990)
The Effective Executive (Peter Drucker, 1966)
Good to Great (Jim Collins, 2001)
The Innovator’s Dilemma (Clay Christensen, 1997)
The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith, 1776)

Respondents included Tom Glocer (Reuters), Jeff Immelt (General Electric), Gerard Kleisterlee (Philips), Andrew Liveris (Dow Chemical), Lakshmi Mittal (ArcelorMittal), Nandan Nilekani (Infosys), Sam Palmisano (IBM), and Howard Stringer (Sony).

Interesting that Wall Street and the global private sector elite choose non-fiction, while Greenspan chooses fiction.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I think future generations will be laughing at us who lived at the beginning of the 21st century. They'll say we were "Greenspanned!" How could we be so stupid to let the rich and powerful get over on us americans? It's simple. We believed the BIG lies.

Free market economics is democracy, for one. Greed is good, says Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan.
It's immoral to not be self-interested.

Second, they told us social programs taught people to be lazy and dependent on the government. If we had to work for "entitlements" like health insurance, pensions, education, etc. instead of getting it for free, we'd appreciate it more. If people need help, let private charities fill that role; they always did in the past.

Third, they told us in a libertarian economy all things are equal: racism, sexism, ageism, ableism don't exist. Anyone who works hard will be prosperous. Just pull yourself up by your...bootstraps.

Fourth, deregulation of business would boost the economy, because regulations prevent large corporations from being benevolent job creators. The more money the corporations make, the more jobs they'll create.

There's much more, but that's a good start. Looking back through hsitory there were many prophetic voices warning america of it's new found freedoms: one is Alexis de Tocqueville.

The "democratic despotism" de Tocqueville warned america about turned out to be the tyranny of free market fudamentalism and materialism that so stifled democracy that what we have is weak democracy, at best. The political rhetoric embraces democracy, holds it in a place of honor, names streets and bridges for it, even while the same politicians strip it away. They've mastered the art of deception.

For example, americans won't take universal health care seriously, because a large enough majority of americans have health insurance. Those covered rarely, if ever, think about the 47 million without. If enough people lose their health insurance, then the masses will awaken.

Let's face it, we live in a corporate-dominated empire. Democracy be damned. As long as we have Wal Mart, everything's okay...

A strong democracy requires critical citizenry, americans who are aware of the greater consequences of the dogma of free market fundamentalism, that it isn't as Ayn Rand says, "me, me, me!" It's as Michael Moore says, "We, we, we!" We the people...

If it's not okay, Vote Kucinich.

peace

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Corporate Crime

Russel Mokhiber, editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter, estimates that white collar crime costs the nation's businesses and individuals at least $100 billion EACH YEAR. (A sum incidentally that is more than 10 times greater then the combined total from larcenies, robberies, burglaries, and auto thefts committed by individuals.) If you count other corporate underhandedness, such as monopolistic price fixing and the sale of faulty goods, the price tag jumps about $200 billion more. And the Justice Department estimates that “taxpayers lose $10 to $20 billion when corporations violate federal regulations.” Corporate Crime is so commonplace according to Mokhiber, that roughly two thirds of the country's 500 largest companies were involved in some form of illegal behavior over a 10-year period. Despite such lawlessness, the white-collar detectives at the FBI do not track corporate crime regularly. “The government can tell the public whether burglary is up or down in Los Angeles for any given month, but it cannot say the same about insider trading, midnight dumping, consumer defrauding, or illegal polluting.” (Dollars & Sense - Nov. 1989)

Externalized Corporate Costs Borne by Society

Ralph Estes is a professor of business administration at American University. He holds a doctorate in business administration from Indiana University. He wrote a book not too long ago called the Tyranny of the Bottom Line in which he estimates that the amount of annual costs that corporations and other businesses externalize and that must be borne by customers, employees, and society is $2,618 billion (TWO TRILLION SIX HUNDRED and EIGHTEEN BILLION DOLLARS - in 1991dollars and then adjusted to 1994 dollars.) This figure does NOT include special tax breaks corporations get or the direct subsidies that they receive. Compared to total corporate profits in the order of Five Hundred and Fifteen Billion Dollars, the estimated societal COSTS of corporations are five and one half times the amount of their benefits.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Now, wrap your mind around this item that was reported in the January/February1996 issue of dollars and sense magazine:

According to the United Nations Development Program, the last three decades have seen an alarming growth of global economic inequality. Thirty years ago, the richest fifth of the world’s population had an income 30 times greater than the poorest fifth. Now, the income of the richest fifth is 61 times that of the poorest fifth. And 358 super-rich individuals now have a combined wealth equaling the total income of 2.3 billion people, nearly half the world’s population.

The Global Picture

To quote David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World:

"Beginning with Adam Smith, market theory has been quite explicit that the efficiency of the market's self-organizing dynamic is a consequence of small, locally owned enterprises competing in local markets on the basis of price, quality, and service in response to customer-defined needs and values. No buyer or seller may be large enough to influence the market price individually.

By contrast, what we know as the global capitalist economy is dominated by a few financial speculators and a handful of globe-spanning megacorporations able to use their massive financial clout and media out-reach to manipulate prices, determine what products will be available to consumers, absorb or drive competitors from the market, and reshape the
values of popular culture to create demand for what the corporations choose
to offer."

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Why must the greedy be driven by something higher? Higher than what? John Dean's book "Conservatives without Conscience", or his recent three part series on smirkingchimp.com, bring some light to this question. The combination of authoritarian personalities and self righteousness is all these 'trickler' folks need to carry out their policies of impoverishing the many for the gain of the few.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

from the Working Assets website. Also on The Village Voice. (BTW, is it still owned by News Corp?

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I can't give Klein a pass for this ' What Greenspan teaches us is that trickle-down isn't really an ideology after all. '

Of course it's an ideology , just as Social Darwinism was an ideology in the 1900s.

As thinking individuals even the greedy need to rationalise their behavior . Just as important is , if they are public figures , to give society a plausible narrative for their behavior ...

The fact that Trickle Down has entered the lexicon shows there to be an ideology. there are many more phrases we hear ... right size , Not down size or layoffs , climate change Not global warming , outsource, Not cheaper labor with no environmental standards ... Free Trade , known to be nonexistent and implausible , instead of , Property Rights and legal immunity for Corporations overseas.

Tom Friedman is the Pied Piper of Free Trade , the cheerleader of Corporate Wisdom and the chief inquisitor of Social Justice .

Of course there is an ideology . You can find it practiced and celebrated at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ... The most powerful lobbyists in Washington today ...

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

According to the ideological father of Neoconservatism, Leo Strauss: “Those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right - the right of the superior to rule over the inferior."

It is not accurate for Greenspan to describe himself as a Libertarian, he is more closely allied to Neoconservativism. He mischaracterizes as a moral good what, in reality, is adherence to the 'natural right' of selective advantage.

Economist and philosopher John Ralston Saul, author of The Collapse of Globalism, has written about the historical context of how the profit motive was linked to religious imperatives in Anglo-American culture. The neoliberals and esp. the neoconservatives have expanded on and modified this ploy to legitimize their conquest of global markets.

I don't think Greenspan, Bush, Paulson, and their Dem counterparts really believe that global corporatism is the fairest or most efficient way of 'rising all boats', but they need political cover and a message to manufacture consent, even if it is a specious one.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

"Then he discovered Ayn Rand. "What she did ... was to make me think why capitalism is not only efficient and practical, but also moral," he said in 1974"

What everyone seems to forget is that Rand believed in Capitalism, not in Corporate Fascism. She was particularly disdainful of the currency and market manipulation that was explicitly Greenspan's job. She did not believe that government had any business in the marketplace, and she thought that business had no right to use government to manipulate markets.

Her stories are littered with phrases like "honest trade between honest men". Since she believed above all, that excellence deserved reward, that free markets allowed the best to profit, she would have been disgusted by the likes of KBR's sweetheart deals in Iraq, or ADM's ethanol bonanza. What's going on in western society is not what she had in mind. In 1964 Rand said, "What we have today is not a capitalist society, but a mixed economy – that is, a mixture of freedom and controls, which, by the presently dominant trend, is moving toward dictatorship.*

Consider for instance, the incident in Atlas Shrugged where a passenger train is taken through a long tunnel by a steam engine, suffocating passengers and crew, because there were no electric engines available. It is the capitalist heroine, Dagny Taggart, who is horrified, she had left standing orders that the tunnel was not to be traversed by steam engines.** The heroes of Rand's books did not worship profit, they worshiped honorable dealings between peers. Profiting from death was not honorable.

It is Rand's villains, Associated Steel and its president Orren Boyle, who most resemble our current captains of industry and finance, lobbying for the public teat, being bailed out repeatedly by the likes of Greenspan.

** Speaking from memory here, my apologies if I've flubbed the plot details.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

And the young graduate student's query is the perfect intro:

"What about a belief that they are building a better world?"

In 1933, Hitler was Time Magazine's man of the year. He was pulling Germany out of the post-war doldrums! He was fighting the completely unfair WWI settlement that left the German people saddled with odiuos war reparations that had bankrupted the country! He was bringing in foreign investment and modernizing the country! Yes, he hated Jews and gypsies and non-Aryan 'cancerous racial inferiors', but the eugenics movement (with strong backing in the U.S. and Britain, thanks to the efforts of Charles Darwin's beloved cousin, Sir Francis Dalton, among others...) made that seem reasonable as well... (incidentally, it's pretty damn spooky that the Israelis call the Palestinians a cancer, if you ask me)... so read that link, and don't always believe what the scientific priesthood has to say, either...

The Nazi leadership truly believed that they were building a better world - and they, at least in their own minds, had a number of very good and patriotic arguments backing them up.

This isn't to claim that Greenspan harbors Nazi sympathies, it just means that every single tyrant in history believed that they were building a better world. It's a rare psychopath who can gain political power while secretly harboring the desire to create a worse world, isn't it?

The only real question for Greenspan and his many followers is this: How long can you keep deluding yourselves?

This is typical of the brainwashing that goes on in Ivy League and similar graduate schools. Students are brought in, surrounded by throngs of respected academics who all think similarly and who reinforce the message for five years or so, while heaping praise on students who adopt the same beliefs ('positive reinforcement').

Those students are then are let out to work as trusted apparatchiks in the upper tiers of corporations and governments. Anyone who gets off message is quickly booted out of the system. You can always just lip-sync the message for a few years, as I did, and you'll be allowed access. Sooner or later, if you're honest, you'll blow a fuse and be kicked out, however. Either that or you'll internalize the value system - and then the brainwashing will be complete.

Want to get into a US academic graduate program? Smile, simper, and let them know you're greedy!

The tell-all expose of John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, contains a blistering description of how the conditioning is carried out in one particular case.

You can tell when the conditioning has been effective - there's a certain glaze that comes over the eyes of the person when information that doesn't fit their world-view is introduced - and they retreat into bizzare generalities. If they're pushed, they wave their hands and say, "well, it's just human nature..."

You can see that very thing in Greenspan's eyes during his discussion with Naomi Klein.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

A chart presented by this blogger shows a 2.8 to 3% average annual per capita GDP growth rate for the period that Greenspan headed the FED, 1987 to 2005. What we see is a drop in the money supply in the boom years (1995-2000) to prevent inflation and a pump up of liquidity to prevent recession in the slower times (2001-03). These are typical FED reactions to normal business cycle expansions and contractions.

More disaggregated studies show something even more interesting. M1 begins to grow markedly after the 1982 trough of the business cycle when there is 10% unemployment and peaks at the height of the expansion in 1985. After this it plummets in 1989 then rapidly peaks in 1992 just during the start of a recovery than plummets way down in 1995 at the start of another expansion after which it expands only very slowly until 2000 when it spikes up again and stays up through the jobless recovery. M2 and M3, which move pretty much in tandem this whole time with some quite notable exceptions, are the less liquid parts of the money supply and represent savings more than spending liquidity. This is especially true of M3. From 1985, the peak of the post 1982 recovery, M1 on the one hand and M2 and M3 on the other hand move in opposite directions until early 2000. What this shows is an increase in financial investment and long term holdings while short term savings and available spending liquidity fluctuates but over all slows in growth on annual average. The idea, therefore, that Greenspan hyper-inflated the US economy and killed the dollar with excess liquidity is nonsense. Greenspan was as tightfisted as his predecessor Paul Volcker in his struggle to control inflation on behalf of long term investors such as bond holders. In fact, the post 1985 increase in long term investment, which is located in M3, is a sure indication that inflation fears had subsided from the Volcker policies and continued to be reflected in the relative expansion of M2 and M3 and relative average annual contraction of M1, the most liquid part of the money supply most culpable for inflationary tendencies.

A still better picture is presented by a trend over a 40 year period (1960-2000) in the rate of interest on US Treasury Bills. In 1975, the interest rates bottomed out after a ten year trend in growing inflation. The Volcker deflation then brought the rates to a peak in 1985. Greenspan lowered the rates to keep the economy going after the crash of '87 and to relieve stock market "jitters." The rates ascended once again until around 1990 when they were once again reduced to reduce the effects of the slowdown and to fight the increase in the deficit. Rates increased in 1995 and stayed level over the course of the great Clinton expansion until 2000 when they were lower significantly to turn the slowdown around and spur growth. Still nothing remarkable and no malfeasance.

Nonsensical cries of "inflationary expansion" and "bubble making" ignore the overall trend of the FED's anti-inflation bias and solid support of the financial markets at the expense of consumers, workers, industry, farm exports and small business. The picture here is one of stalwart opposition to inflation!! Most of the opposition to this assessment is sheer crackpot monetarism!! The real story of the FED is that of being a handmaiden in the long term shift from an industrial to a financially based economy. That requires low not high inflation to succeed.

As I've explained before the real sources of inflation in the US economy are deficits, an effective pump up of liquidity through credit with little real productivity behind it, and military spending which I explained ad nauseum. Here it is not the FED but the preferences of an incompetent and reactionary executive that is responsible for the problems here.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I don't understand the economics you guys are fighting over. Is it something about what utopian system would work better in the future? I think you guys are agreed about who the bad guys are; why don't we talk about how to get rid of them.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Greenspan took the helm of the FED in the late summer of 1987 just before Black Monday and the crash of the Stock Market. After struggles with rate hikes of various types, particularly the federal funds rate, the rate of inflation, which peaked at 6.25% in the last quarter of 1990 plummeted to an annual average of below 3% from the first quarter of 1991 to the end of 2000 when the economy began to slide. Inflation has only recently begun to spike up because of the slide in the dollar's value, deficits and federal spending.

As proof of the anti-inflationary bias of the FED, the Dow Jones reacted spectacularly. From 1987, when Greenspan took over the FED to the final quarter of 1993 the Dow gained about 1000 points going from about 2,600 to 3,600, an average of between 150 to 160 points per year. After the plummeting of inflation in the early 1990s, the Dow shot up from about 3,600 points during the start of the Clinton economic recovery to 12,000 points in the last quarter of 2000, over a thousand points per year gain!! This would not have been possible if, as the wingnuts claim, the FED was creating inflation and devaluing the dollar espeicially as trade deficits were widening. Their logic doesn't pan out. The foolish Wingnut claim of the "inflationary" FED must be dismissed as the nonsense that it has always been.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]