View this email in your browser 'The Fed Is a Political Institution That Pretends Not to Be Political' Journalist William Greider, who died on Christmas Day 2019 at the age of 83, was a repeat guest on CounterSpin; Janine Jackson interviewed him about former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan for the September 21, 2007, episode. This is a lightly edited transcript. MP3 Link Janine Jackson: Alan Greenspan is the sort of person about whom the Los Angeles Times would report: Whether on Wall Street or Pennsylvania Avenue, no voice carries more weight on economic matters in the United States than that of Greenspan, his status as a “former” notwithstanding. Newsweek headlines their interview, “The Oracle Reveals All.” Given that, it's reasonable to question whether corporate media will permit the former Federal Reserve chair, who has just released a memoir, to write his own legacy. Present tension has focused on Greenspan's backing off from a statement he made in the book about the Iraq War being about oil. But what about his descriptions of the economic policies he supported, and their impacts? What should reporters be asking the man some called “The Maestro” about those? Joining us now to talk about Greenspan and the press is William Greider, national affairs correspondent at The Nation magazine, and author, most recently, of The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy. He joins us now by phone from Vermont. Welcome to CounterSpin, William Greider. William Greider: Thanks, Janine. JJ: Alan Greenspan is now criticizing the Bush White House for straying from conservative economic policy, of small government, and holding down spending, and so forth. As someone who watched his term very carefully, how close is this Alan Greenspan to that one? Is this a wholesale reinvention? William Greider: "The public, because it's not very well-represented by their elected representatives, is kept distanced from those arguments, and therefore doesn't even know they're going on, much less have a voice in them." WG: He's rewriting the record, or trying to; it’s quite amazing, actually. He's only been out of that office about a year or so. But I think he recognizes that the bones he left behind are now beginning to smell a bit. We have a financial crisis, which has been written about a lot. We're on the edge of a recession. The United States economy, not withstanding the usual headlines, is in terrible shape for the long term. And Greenspan had a major, maybe the most important, role in creating that. So now he wants to go back and say, “Well, actually, I didn't do this. I didn't mean that.” It's quite extraordinary. And, of course, the press, true to form, is mostly being deferential and accepting his revisions. Well, now we know what he really thinks. He was in this job 18 years, and we finally have to get the truth out of him. Well, it's not the truth; he's really, literally rewriting history. JJ: He's not getting a completely free ride. Paul Krugman took him on in the New York Times... WG: That’s true JJ: ...the Washington Post editorial had him as “not entirely blameless.” WG: Oh, that’s tough, yeah! JJ: He has had an extra sweet ride with the media, hasn't he, all along? WG: Yeah. And in the context of that institution, the Federal Reserve, that's not new. It's a very intimidating political institution, which pretends not to be political. And the press has mostly always gone along with that. They defer to the Federal Reserve in a way they defer to nobody else in government. And Greenspan was probably the most extreme example of that, for lots of reasons, including the complexity and intimidating nature of the central bank, but also because they thought his idea of what was right for the economy was pretty much what they thought. JJ: Perhaps that buy-in may explain a reluctance on the part of media to really challenge those presumptions, because they shared them. WG: Yes, I think that's right. JJ: Greenspan is presented as dry-eyed, as a sort of eminence grise, but you once wrote that, “It is not exactly that he lies, but Alan Greenspan certainly ranks among the most duplicitous figures to serve in modern American government.” You said that he “corrupt[ed] the political dialogue,” and I wonder if you can talk about the role that reporters played in abetting that. Secrets of the Temple (1989) WG: It starts with ignorance. Surprise. I mean, I spent a number of years producing a book called Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country. And I say with some pride that it's still in print, and sold lots and lots of copies. Even Alan Greenspan, I can say, had it on his shelf when he was at the Fed, because you can see it in the pictures of him, behind him. And what I came to understand about the complexities of monetary policy—and it is complex—is that it boils down to a number of fairly straightforward propositions: Are you going to favor holding down inflation over growth and employment? Are you going to favor capital over labor, that is, allowing wages to rise in step with economic growth, or financial assets, like stocks and bonds and so forth. These are really core choices of a democracy, and the Fed essentially hides them from public view. That is to keep them “nonpolitical,” but, of course, they're not nonpolitical. And the people who care intensely from the capital interests—that is financiers, bankers—lobby the Fed relentlessly. And they don't lobby in the usual way, by turning out campaign contributions, but they stay very close to the inside debates. The public, because it's not very well-represented by their elected representatives, is kept distanced from those arguments, and therefore doesn't even know they're going on, much less have a voice in them. And that's—you can tell from my tone of voice—to me, that's the central outrage of this institution. Greenspan committed heresy, really, within the realm of his own institution, by dabbling in the politics, relentlessly. Now, he’s not the first Fed chairman to do that, but he made common cause with the right-wing ideology of the Republican Party, and he scolded the Democrats relentlessly. When Bill Clinton was president, he got Clinton to take what I think was a very wrong deal, to sort of hold down the economy, and let's keep inflation going lower and lower and lower, and we'll catch up later. Whereas when Bush comes in, Bush proposes an outrageous, regressive tax-cutting agenda, favoring the very top incomes, etc., and Greenspan comes out and says, “Yes, I like that, you should do that.” JJ: Even though that's one of the things he's now trying to say…. WG: That's part of what he's rewriting as well:  I didn't really say I endorsed the Bush tax cuts. Well, he did. It's all in the record. He testified to that effect.  This is not a stupid person. He knew exactly what he was doing when he made that remark. JJ: Some of us remember another former government official who had a change of heart about economic policy—David Stockman, Reagan's budget director. But Stockman, it seemed like, had real doubts about what he’d done. This is not Greenspan having doubts about the impact of his policies. WG: No, and Stockman was interesting, because I was talking to him all through that period. I was then an editor at the Washington Post, and wrote a piece myself, called “The Education of David Stockman,” about those conversations, in which he actually, I think quite honestly, and against his own interest, acknowledged that his grand theory of right-wing ideology had proved wrong. He thought that the Reagan program was going to balance the budget, and do all kinds of other good things, and it was simply wrong. JJ: That's certainly not what we're seeing with Alan Greenspan. Let me just ask you, finally, whether or not he is successful, does Greenspan's attempt to distance himself from some of the Bush White House's economic policies suggest that there's a real threat to the heyday of those policies? I mean, the essentials that you were talking about—you know, paying for tax cuts for the rich on the backs of workers—that all seems to still be in place. WG: It is in place now, Janine, but I think you probably see the same thing I observe: It is in collapse, and I mean utter collapse. All of the things they proposed as fundamental economic policy for the US have come to ruin. And that's whether you're talking about the so-called free-trade system or holding down inflation, rewarding capital, punishing labor with depressed wages, or deregulation and what we've gotten from that…. I could go on with list. We don't know how quickly and rationally it can be played out in politics. But I think when you look at the 2008 election, that's what it will be about, whether any Democrats have the nerve to say it plainly or not. JJ: We've been speaking with William Greider. You can follow his work in The Nation magazine. His latest book is the The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy. Thank you very much for joining us this week on CounterSpin. WG: Thanks for having me. © 2018 Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. All rights reserved. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting Our mailing address is: FAIRNESS & ACCURACY IN REPORTING 124 W. 30th Street, Suite 201 New York, NY 10001 FAIR's Website FAIR counts on your support to do this work — please donate today.

FOCUS: Paul Krugman | The Cruelty of a Trump Christmas

24 December 19 A Serious Fight With the Orange Menace No Doubt The struggle to save American Democracy from the clutches of Donald Trump and his enablers over the past three years has been intense to say the least. We are clearly at a crossroads. RSN has been a vital player in the network of organizations meeting the challenge with resolve, day-in and day-out. RSN is going to fight - that’s a fact. What we are doing is working. Help with funding please. Marc Ash Founder, Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Update My Monthly Donation If you would prefer to send a check: Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts, CA 95611

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FOCUS: Paul Krugman | The Cruelty of a Trump Christmas

Paul Krugman, The New York Times

Krugman writes: "By Trump-era standards, Ebenezer Scrooge was a nice guy."

EXCERPT:

After all, the explosion of the budget deficit under Trump shows that Republican claims to care about fiscal responsibility were always humbug, that they’re perfectly willing to slash taxes on the rich without offsetting spending cuts. Furthermore, because America spends relatively little money helping the poor, even harsh cuts — like the Trump administration’s new rules on food stamps, which will hurt hundreds of thousands — will at best save only tiny amounts compared with the cost of tax cuts.

And in important cases, the right is so eager to hurt low-income Americans that it’s willing to do so even if there are no budget savings at all.

Consider the case of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, which a 2012 Supreme Court decision made optional: States could choose not to participate.

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FOCUS: Paul Krugman | The Day the Trump Boom Died

25 October 19

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25 October 19 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News THE FUTILITY OF “EMERGENCY ONLY” CONTRIBUTING - We are blessed with supporters, readers, community members who sustain Reader Supported News month in and month out. But for some reason, only when it becomes clear that the organization is absolutely desperate. That’s something that we really want to move away from. For the sake of the organization and the community that we serve. In solidarity. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! FOCUS: Paul Krugman | The Day the Trump Boom Died Paul Krugman, The New York Times Krugman writes: "Last spring Donald Trump and the people around him probably thought they had a relatively clear path to re-election." EXCERPTS: However, important parts of the economy are lagging. Manufacturing production is down over the past year; combined with weakness in shipping and very hard times in agriculture, around a fifth of the economy is effectively in recession. In particular, manufacturing employment has been falling in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, states that chose Trump by tiny margins in 2016, giving him a win in the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote. And overall growth, while still positive, is definitely slowing: “nowcasts,” which use partial data to estimate what official economic data will say when it’s eventually released, suggest an economy growing at an unimpressive annual rate of less than 2 percent. Since elections turn more on the economy’s growth rate than on things like the level of unemployment — unemployment was still more than 7 percent when Ronald Reagan won his 1984 landslide — this is not good news for Republicans. Probably even more significant, there has been a dramatic decline, almost a collapse, in business confidence. And 10-year bond rates have plunged, from more than 3 percent last year to 1.75 percent as I write this. The last time we saw this kind of plunge was 2010-11, when investors finally realized that recovery from the Great Recession was going to be slow and painful, not a repeat of “morning in America.” So what happened to the Trump boom? The collapse in confidence began late last year, when it became clear that Trump was serious about waging trade war on China; it continued as evidence accumulated that the 2017 tax cut was a big fizzle, doing basically nothing to boost business investment and providing at most a brief sugar high to overall growth. But the truth is that even pessimists expected the tax cut to do more good, and the trade war less harm, than they did. Why have things turned out so poorly? One answer, to which I’ve subscribed, is that in addition to its direct impacts on U.S. exports and businesses that rely on Chinese suppliers, the trade war has created damaging uncertainty. Businesses that rely on global supply chains won’t invest for fear that the trade war will get even worse; but businesses that might move in to replace imports also won’t invest for fear that Trump will eventually back down. I suspect, however, that there’s even more to the story. Business interests spent a long time in denial, but now even they are facing up to the reality that Trump and his team are very strange people who have no idea what they’re doing — and the uncertainty that reality implies. I mean, considering that trade confrontation with China is the centerpiece of Trump’s economic policy, it’s not reassuring to learn that his trade war czar, Peter Navarro, has an imaginary friend — a source named “Ron Vara” whom he has repeatedly cited in his books, but who doesn’t exist, and whose name is in fact just an anagram of “Navarro.” Next year’s election should be about Trump’s betrayal of his oath of office. Realistically, however, it also matters that the economy probably won’t be his friend. READ MORE Contribute to RSN Update My Monthly Donation

Paul Krugman | Luckily, Trump Is an Unstable Non-Genius

12 October 19

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Paul Krugman | Luckily, Trump Is an Unstable Non-Genius

Paul Krugman, The New York Times
Krugman writes: "The surprising thing about the constitutional crisis we're now facing is that it took so long to happen. It was obvious from early on that the president of the United States is a would-be autocrat who accepts no limits on his power and considers criticism a form of treason."

EXCERPTS:

Trump’s domestic economic policy, however, has been standard Republican top-down class warfare. None of that $300 billion went for social benefits or even his continually promised, never-delivered infrastructure plan. Instead, it went mainly into tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy that have done little to boost investment.

At the same time, Trump has pursued his personal tariff obsession despite mounting evidence that it’s hurting growth. The economy was supposed to be his big political selling point. Instead, polls of his net job approval on economic policy are, on average, barely positive even now — and likely to get worse as tariffs on consumer goods bite and the economy slows.

It says a lot about the modern G.O.P. that the party is still solidly behind a man so obviously, grotesquely, not up to the job (although some rank-and-file Republicans now back an impeachment inquiry). But those of us who want America as we know it to survive should be grateful that Trump is so immature and incompetent. His character flaws are the only thing that gives us a fighting chance.

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The Capitol in Washington is seen at dawn on Oct. 3, 2019. (photo: AP)

More Potential Whistleblowers Are Contacting Congress
Spencer Ackerman, Sam Brodey and Sam Stein, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "New potential whistleblowers are coming forward to the House Democrats' impeachment inquiry, two congressional sources tell The Daily Beast."

EXCERPTS:

One knowledgeable source said that the daily accumulation of revelations about Trump’s willingness to use U.S. foreign relations for his personal political benefit has prompted more people to approach Congress. Two associates of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani have been arrested and charged with campaign-finance violations arising from their Ukraine dirt-digging effort. The Financial Times reported that Trump China adviser Michael Pillsbury said he received “quite a bit of background” on Joe Biden’s son after Trump publicly called for China to aid his domestic political prospects. The Washington Post reported that Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, and Trump attempted to quash a prosecution of a Turkish national—represented by Giuliani and important to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—for violating Iran sanctions.

The revelations come while Congress interviews the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine the administration removed, Maria Yovanovitch, despite the White House’s announced refusal to cooperate with the House Democratic inquiry. Other cracks in that front have emerged. On Friday, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union implicated in the Ukraine pressure campaign, announced through his lawyers that he will defy State Department instructions against talking to Congress. 

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Supporters react as U.S. president Donald Trump holds a campaign rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (photo: Leah Millis/Reuters)

Raw, Angry, Uncensored: Welcome to Trump's Impeachment-Era Campaign
Gabby Orr, Politico
Orr writes: "First he claimed the political establishment was rigging the 2016 election against him. Then he accused special counsel Robert Mueller of overseeing an 'attempted takeover of the government.'"

EXCERPT: 

Friday’s rally capped a day filled with more twists in the impeachment drama, as well as several adverse legal rulings for the president and a key departure from his administration.

Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, defied a directive from the administration not to testify about being recalled from her post, and appeared in a marathon session before the three House committees conducting the impeachment inquiry.

One of the two foreign-born associates of the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani who were arrested this week while trying to leave the country was reported to have boasted three years ago about his friendship with Trump, even as the president on Friday said he didn’t know either of them.

And in the courts, Trump lost an appeal to keep his financial records from Democrats investigating him, then suffered setbacks on trying to deny green cards to certain immigrants and reappropriate federal money for the construction of his border wall.

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Migrants, part of a caravan of thousands from Central America trying to reach the United States, climb down a steep hill near the border wall into the U.S. from Tijuana, Mexico. (photo: Leah Millis/Reuters)

Courts Block Trump's Rule to Keep Out Low-Income Immigrants
Nicole Narea, Vox
Excerpt: "Two federal courts on Friday prevented the Trump administration from implementing a rule that would have created new barriers to low-income immigrants seeking to enter the US."
READ MORE

Kevin McAleenan. (photo: CBS)

ALSO SEE: Trump's Homeland Security Chief Was Shouted
Offstage by Protesters at an Immigration Forum

Kevin McAleenan Resigns as Acting Homeland Security Secretary
Franco Ordonez, NPR
Ordonez writes: "Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan is leaving his post, the latest casualty at the department responsible for protecting U.S. borders."

EXCERPT:

"President Trump is now completely rid of the team that delayed, undermined, and stalled the 2016 election's mandate," a hard-line immigration enforcement ally of the administration said. "He has what he's never had before: competent personnel to carry out his vision on immigration."

Some are already calling for Trump to move acting Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli into the role.

"The president understands that the opposition seeks to stop his efforts to secure the border and restore control over our nation's immigration system through court orders and injunctions," the ally said. "What better force to stop this than the former AG of Virginia and one of the most skilled appellate lawyers in the country?"

Since April, former Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, U.S. Secret Service Director Randolph "Tex" Alles and acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Ronald Vitiello have resigned.

In June, Trump also accepted the resignation of acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner John Sanders.

READ MORE

Unarmed protesters face militarized police in Port au Prince, Haiti, as fuel shortages are rampant across the country. (photo: Reuters)

Haiti: Protesters Try to Take President Moise's Home, Demand He Resign
teleSUR
Excerpt: "The Haitian police used tear gas to disperse hundreds of opposition protesters who defended themselves with stones and bottles, upon trying to reach the residence of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, to 'collect his resignation letter.'"

EXCERPT:

Since February, Haiti has been the scene of massive and deadly protests by demonstrators demanding the resignation of Moise and his administration amid major corruption allegations.

When the country was already dealing with a tense economic crisis and high inflation, a report was published accusing the President Moise and dozens of officials of having embezzled US$2 billion from Petrocaribe, the cut-price-oil aid program that Venezuela offered to several Caribbean countries, among them Haiti.

The funds were meant to finance infrastructure development along with health, education and social programs across the impoverished nation. The president has since refused to step down and Congress has been three-times unable to push forward his resignation.

The Carribean country of 11 million people has been struggling for decades to overcome extreme poverty along with widespread corruption. These last ten years were particularly harsh for Haiti, which went through one of the world's deadliest earthquakes in 2010, an epidemic of cholera, brought in accidentally by United Nations peacekeepers, and Hurricane Matthew in October 2016.

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Pollution from a factory. (photo: Science Focus)

Google Funds Climate Deniers
Jordan Davidson, EcoWatch
Davidson writes: "Google has continued to curry political favor with staunch conservatives by making substantial financial contributions to more than a dozen groups that deny that the climate crisis is real, as The Guardian revealed in a bombshell investigation."
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