Come Home America: An Interview With Truth Teller William Greider

I first became aware of William Greider after the publication of his 1981, Atlantic Monthly profile of President Reagan’s embattled Office of Management and Budget Director (“OMB”), David Stockman. At the time I was just a kid and the Reagan administration insisted they could simultaneously balance the budget, cut taxes and increase defense spending exponentially.

Greider’s reporting however exposed that even Stockman, doubted the fiscal prudence of Reaganomics. After the article’s publication, Stockman absorbed public humiliation when President Reagan took him “to the woodshed.” I trace that article as a seminal moment in my own political awareness.

Over the years, Greider has been a determined voice of truth against a backdrop of America’s pro-war, pro-Wall Street governing elites and their enablers inside the corporate media. While Alan Greenspan was celebrated, Greider warned that the Federal Reserve and other regulatory agencies were guilty of dereliction. When celebrated economists such as Paul Krugman extolled the virtues of free trade and globalization, Greider warned of diminished wages at home and condemned the shameful exploitation our consumption habits subsidized abroad.

Greider’s latest book, Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country, just published by Rodale, is a manifesto of hope and warning. In Chapter One, Greider writes:

“Think of America at this point as a muscular teenager, full of talent, adolescent energy, and youth’s over-reaching impulses. This is a critical stage in human development and for our nation it could go either way. Some nations that acted like willful children when they were young formed balanced societies when they became adults. Other nations have never really grown up.

The question, I think is whether-we-the people who proudly call ourselves Americans – can mature as a society. The country can develop a deeper sense of what matters most in life and what doesn’t. It can shed some self-destructive reflexes and acquire a wiser sense of national self-interest that is anchored in the nation’s ideals. Wisdom tempers egotism. This is true for both people and nations.

Or, the United States can plunge ahead self-indulgently, repeating destructive habits, acting out reckless ambitions, and getting into deeper trouble. We all know children who, for whatever reason, got older but never found themselves. This is possible for nations too, especially ones that refuse to reconcile themselves to new realities.

I am betting we will grow into our maturity and hoping that lots of Americans agree.”

Greider’s book chronicles why America is in dire straits and proposes numerous solutions to facilitate a better economic foundation for the struggling middle class. His recommendations include consolidating many of the Federal Reserve’s functions within the executive branch to ensure public accountability for monetary policy, replacing private pension plans such as 401ks with government pension plans instead and capping U.S. trade deficits through a general emergency tariff authorized under the charter of the World Trade Organization.

Even more than any singular remedy however, Greider’s book urges outraged citizens to embrace activism as a means of forcing the powerful in the public and private sectors to finally put our national interests above corporate greed. Ultimately, Greider's book argues that the current crisis is an opportunity for citizens to reengage and facilitate a more just and equitable society.

Greider is the best-selling author of five previous books, including One World, Ready or Not; Who Will Tell the People; and Secrets of the Temple. He’s written for the Washington Post and Rolling Stone as well as serving as an on-air correspondent for six PBS Frontline documentaries. Currently, Greider is the national affairs correspondent for The Nation.

Greider agreed to a podcast telephone interview with me this afternoon about his book and views. Our conversation was just over forty-eight minutes and among the topics we discussed were the current A.I.G. bonus controversy, the Democratic Party’s culpability in overriding state and local laws against usury, his recommendations to overhaul the Federal Reserve and pension system, America's destructive relationship with China, our excessive militarism and the fine line being walked by activists who support the Democratic Party and President Obama while, simultaneously pushing for real change.

Please refer to the flash media player below.



This interview can also be accessed via the Itunes Store at no cost by searching for either the "Intrepid Liberal Journal" or "Robert Ellman."

Clarence Darrow & Yogi Berra

Arguably America’s greatest trial lawyer, Clarence Darrow, famously once said,

"First and last, it's a question of money. Those men who own the earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing justice, not the slightest in the world."

Reading this morning’s headlines about A.I.G. utilizing $165 million of their $170 billion tax payer financed bailout for bonuses, reminded me of Darrow’s insight. The excuse being offered after all is that a “contract is a contract” and A.I.G. must fulfill their obligations.

Isn’t it curious how contracts are deemed sacrosanct for Wall Street beneficiaries but not blue-collar members of unions in the auto industry? Unions are expected to get “realistic” and “ renegotiate” their contracts but moneyed elites are allowed to carry on as before. Anyone who has the temerity to point out the contradiction is “unreasonable,” “angry,” “extreme,” or heaven forbid, one of those “crazy left wing bloggers.”

For what it’s worth, I personally believe all demographics must ultimately sacrifice for the greater good during this calamity. Unlike its imperial antecedents, the American empire has largely serviced the purpose of consumer excess – especially for the top. With America’s empire in decline, all hands must now be on deck to reverse our society’s cascade of ruin as we develop a new socio-economic paradigm, absent the perks and burdens of a hyper-power.

That means a tough transition for all of us as we cease to consume a quarter of the world’s resources, work to extricate ourselves from Beijing bankers and end our addiction to military conflict as a means of resolving disputes. Nonetheless, how can any president ask Americans to accept their health benefits being taxed, when A.I.G. is permitted to distribute unseemly bonuses after their conduct precipitated the current crisis? Bottom line, the worst insurance company in history is utilizing our tax dollars to reward their employees with bonuses, while the rest of us are treading water and being asked to shed even more skin.

I suspect most people understand we have to change in order to bring about change. That was my sense during the campaign as I canvassed and phonebanked. Indeed, as the Jon Stewart showdown with CNBC’s Jim Cramer illustrated, Americans are finally ready for hard truths after lies about WMD’s in Iraq while warning signs with respect to the current economic crisis were ignored. People are just desperate enough now to respond to hard truth if it’s backed up with a coherent strategy and the pain is absorbed fairly.

Alas, asking people who are currently teetering on the abyss to sacrifice has no credibility given the circumstances and messengers. How could it when tax-cheat Timothy Geithner and his plutocratic deregulating mentor from the Clinton Administration, Larry Summers, continue to subsidize thieves? The good people of A.I.G. are like the proverbial bank robbers holding bags of nitroglycerin. Give us your money they say or we’ll drop our nitroglycerin bags on what’s left of the global economy. So we continue to appease them.

Now in fairness to President Obama, he inherited what can only be described as a cluster fuck. And he hasn’t even been in office two months. Furthermore, much of the so-called political opposition as well as the establishment that critiques him, are simultaneously insipid and disingenuous. As I wrote a few days ago,

“Already you’re hearing voices question whether President Obama’s is pushing too much at once on the ‘system.’ These voices sound reasonable when they claim we should ‘fix the economy first’ and worry about health-care, energy and education later. They're enablers of capitalism’s dark underbelly, hoping to run out the clock on President Obama’s popularity and continue business as usual.”

Hence, I largely support the goals of President Obama’s proposed budget and have contempt for this “establishment” that failed to address the very challenges he dares to take on. Clarence Darrow would certainly recognize those that oppose Obama’s agenda as elites making laws to “protect what they have” at the expense of everyone else.

Yet each day that passes without the Obama administration implementing a credible, transparent and coherent strategy to address America’s banking and housing crisis, only serves to further tighten the Gordian knot of economic calamity. This week we're supposed to hear more from Secretary Geithner about his plans to resolve these challenges with a “public-private” partnership. I don’t have much faith in Geithner, an upwardly mobile tax-cheating plutocrat who previously served at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and engineered the TARP legislation that passed last fall.

So even though it hasn’t even been two months since Obama’s inaugural, a famous Yogi Berra quote also comes to mind:

“It gets late early around here.”

Update: The San Francisco Chronicle reports that A.I.G.'s bonus payout totals $450 million.

Remember This Commerical?