I just had one of those weird disconnect experiences, like HUH?? I read two entirely opposite accounts of the same time period and they can’t both be right. First I read Michael Moore’s recent book “Here Comes Trouble”, which isn’t great, but has some interesting anecdotes worth reading. The one that caught my attention was the time Moore attended “Expo Maquila ‘86', a US Commerce Department conference in Acapulco, Mexico to help US companies move jobs to Mexico and save on labor costs. He went to write an article for Nader’s Multinational Monitor. Nader’s chief of staff John Richard told him, “The Reagan administration, they’ve been on a mission to do this since they took office.”
At the conference an Arizona Congressman told the crowd, “General Motors would close those nine plants in the US in the coming year and many more in the years to come.” As Moore puts it, “A well oiled machine was already revved up and in motion to snuff out the American middle class…In the ensuing years I would witness the wholesale destruction of towns like Flint across the country, and I would think, “I was there! I saw the murder being planned. The plot to kill the American Dream was hatched and enacted right in front of my eyes." This led Moore to make his first film “Roger and Me” which is where the book ends.
Cut to Paul Craig Roberts' most recent article, “The Dismal Economic Outlook For The New Year”: In this article Roberts cites the fact that, “In the first decade of the 21st century, Detroit, Michigan, lost 25% of its population. Gary, Indiana, lost 22%. Flint, Michigan, lost 18%. Cleveland, Ohio, lost 17%. In St. Louis, Missouri, 19% of the housing is vacant. These population losses were not the result of the Black Plague or killer viruses or a nuclear attack. They were the result of corporate CEOs, pushed by their own greed, by the greed of Wall Street and that of large retailers such as Wal-Mart, aided and abetted by “our” government, into moving millions of manufacturing, software engineering, information technology, engineering, research, development, and design jobs offshore… In the first decade of the 21st century, Americans lost 5,500,000 manufacturing jobs. US employment in the manufacture of computer and electronic products fell by 40%; in the production of machinery by 30%, in motor vehicles and parts by 44%, and in the manufacture of clothing by 66%...In other words, in ten years the US economy was decimated by jobs offshoring for the sole purpose of higher rewards to capital in the form of multi-million dollar executive bonuses and large shareholder capital gains.”
Roberts was an official in the Treasury department during the Reagan presidency. In his article, How the Economy Was Lost, Roberts says, “The first economic act of the "free market" Reagan administration in 1981 was to put quotas on the import of Japanese cars in order to protect Detroit and the United Auto Workers.”
Roberts elaborates further in his recent interview on Max Keiser denying that the Reagan administration helped to outsource jobs to other countries. He claims this only started after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and China and India opened up their countries to foreign capital and US companies. Do I believe someone who was working for Nader, universally known as a completely honest person, or do I believe a former Reagan official, the same administration that produced Ollie North, John Poindexter and many other world class liars, and had hundreds of people convicted of corruption. Furthermore many of George W. Bush's people who presided over this slaughter of the American worker came from the Reagan administration. And it's consistent with their philosophy, let's not forget PATCO. I'll go with Nader.
Bullshit. Roberts is either being disingenuous, doesn’t know what the rest of the Reagan administration was up to during his time in government, or perhaps it’s just selective memory. As one of the originators of “Reaganomics” (cut taxes, increase military spending, and balance the budget: aka “voodoo economics”), Roberts has a lot to atone for. If you don't remember these policies nearly tripled the US debt in 8 years. Reagan has the record for the greatest increase in debt by % of any US President. See link.
Roberts is doing a damn good job of compensating for his years with Reagan with his recent writing, bashing neo-cons, militarism, and offshoring US jobs. See all his writing here: http://www.vdare.com/users/paul-craig-roberts
Roberts explains that the government is not going to let the banks fail no matter what, and that the fed will continue to issue credit to banks like the recent $16.1 trillion bailout of US and foreign banks leading to inflation. Of course all this is in the context of the recent signing of the NDAA which allows indefinite detention of anyone, including US citizens, anywhere in the world including the US for no reason and no due process of law. As Chalmers Johnson said, you can have an empire or a democracy, but you can’t have both. We are obviously trading our democracy for empire with the help of both major political parties.
Roberts concludes, “I cannot predict how long policymakers can hold economic armageddon at bay with spin, money creation, currency swaps, intervention in gold and silver markets, and outright lies. The onset could be sudden and take place this year, but we shouldn’t underestimate the power of spin over a gullible public that trusts “their” government and fervently believes that Muslim terrorists are out to get them and that the demise of the Constitution, the product of an eight hundred year struggle that produced Anglo-American civil liberty, is worth the price of “safety.” There is no safety in a police state and a debauched currency. The comfortable world that Americans have known is falling apart at the seams.”
Good riddance to the US empire, and welcome to free Vermont.
Happy New Year!