Barack Obama: Read Progressive Economists, Not Free Market Journalists
In a great article in the WSJ by Thomas Frank (via cursor.org). he suggests that Barack Obama get himself a new reading list.
Specifically, Obama was seen last week with a book by journalist Fareed Zakaria that is a paean to the so called free market.
"It used to be, senator, that bright young foreign-policy pundits turned out a predictable product. Every foreign election, every inflation spike or productivity slowdown overseas was plugged into the same master narrative: country X needed to embrace "free trade"; country Y had allowed labor unions to get too strong; country Z needed to cut taxes and deregulate.
"Mr. Zakaria cleverly yokes together this favorite pundit hobbyhorse with another: American decline. The problem, he argues, is not that other lands need to learn the laissez-faire way; it's that they have learned it too well, that they're better at it than we are, and that "the rise of the rest" – namely, China and India – threatens to problematize the precious number-oneness of the U.S.
"The facts Mr. Zakaria adduces to prove this have an oddly size-ist bias, as they might say on campus. The tallest building in the world is in Taiwan, he writes; the richest human is a Mexican; and China has the world's biggest factories, biggest shopping malls and its biggest casino.
"But don't be alarmed, senator. By this reasoning, one might just as well claim that British health care is better than anyone else's because London has the world's tallest hospital building. Or that Falangist Spain was the acme of piety since Generalissimo Franco built the world's largest crucifix.
"But in the ways that matter, Mr. Zakaria is faultlessly on-message, especially when it comes to the utter and complete righteousness of markets..."
(Laissez faire markets, at that.)
"For Mr. Zakaria, the truly enlightened Americans, the ones who understand the coming order, are apparently Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company and assorted business chieftains. When Mr. Zakaria writes that Third World leaders "have heard Western CEOs explain where the future lies," he means it not as a sarcastic slap at those CEOs but as homage to their wisdom.
"Average Americans, meanwhile, give Mr. Zakaria fits, what with their stubborn ignorance of foreign ways and their doubts about free trade. This attitude, in turn, has opened up 'a growing gap between America's worldly business elite and cosmopolitan class, on the one hand, and the majority of the American people, on the other.'
"A warning here, senator. This is not an idea that will endear you to the people of Montana, or Ohio, or Pennsylvania. Were you to integrate it into your stump speech, you might even deliver the South Side of Chicago over to John McCain.
"One more reason to be leery of all this market idolatry: It's wrong. Take the aspect of the "new era" that Mr. Zakaria most admires – "the free movement of capital," the international loans and investments he worships as "globalization's celestial mechanism for discipline." In point of fact, the rise of China and India – Mr. Zakaria's own paradigm cases – was possible only because those countries shunned global commercial credit markets in the 1970s, allowing them to avoid the interest-rate shock of the early '80s."
If you're squeezed for time, Senator Obama, take Thomas Franks advice.
As Franks writes: "How do I know this? It's all explained in a far more worthwhile new book, "The Predator State," by James K. Galbraith. At your next photo-op, Mr. Obama, I hope to see you half way through it."
And Senator Obama, when you have some time, Galbraith, Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker, Jared Bernstein are the economists you should be consulting and reading.
It is not Fareed Zakaria's book with his heroic "visionaries" like Goldman Sachs and others of that ilk whose greed and lobbying for little or no regulation so they can make billions more at the expense of regular hardworking Americans; with an assist from the deregulations and minimum or no oversight federal regulatory agencies under the Bush administration that has any merit other than how terribly wrong Zakaria is. These institutions and people all helped cause the economic catastrophe in which the US is trapped and floundering. Take no advice from Zakaria or his book.
Specifically, Obama was seen last week with a book by journalist Fareed Zakaria that is a paean to the so called free market.
"It used to be, senator, that bright young foreign-policy pundits turned out a predictable product. Every foreign election, every inflation spike or productivity slowdown overseas was plugged into the same master narrative: country X needed to embrace "free trade"; country Y had allowed labor unions to get too strong; country Z needed to cut taxes and deregulate.
"Mr. Zakaria cleverly yokes together this favorite pundit hobbyhorse with another: American decline. The problem, he argues, is not that other lands need to learn the laissez-faire way; it's that they have learned it too well, that they're better at it than we are, and that "the rise of the rest" – namely, China and India – threatens to problematize the precious number-oneness of the U.S.
"The facts Mr. Zakaria adduces to prove this have an oddly size-ist bias, as they might say on campus. The tallest building in the world is in Taiwan, he writes; the richest human is a Mexican; and China has the world's biggest factories, biggest shopping malls and its biggest casino.
"But don't be alarmed, senator. By this reasoning, one might just as well claim that British health care is better than anyone else's because London has the world's tallest hospital building. Or that Falangist Spain was the acme of piety since Generalissimo Franco built the world's largest crucifix.
"But in the ways that matter, Mr. Zakaria is faultlessly on-message, especially when it comes to the utter and complete righteousness of markets..."
(Laissez faire markets, at that.)
"For Mr. Zakaria, the truly enlightened Americans, the ones who understand the coming order, are apparently Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company and assorted business chieftains. When Mr. Zakaria writes that Third World leaders "have heard Western CEOs explain where the future lies," he means it not as a sarcastic slap at those CEOs but as homage to their wisdom.
"Average Americans, meanwhile, give Mr. Zakaria fits, what with their stubborn ignorance of foreign ways and their doubts about free trade. This attitude, in turn, has opened up 'a growing gap between America's worldly business elite and cosmopolitan class, on the one hand, and the majority of the American people, on the other.'
"A warning here, senator. This is not an idea that will endear you to the people of Montana, or Ohio, or Pennsylvania. Were you to integrate it into your stump speech, you might even deliver the South Side of Chicago over to John McCain.
"One more reason to be leery of all this market idolatry: It's wrong. Take the aspect of the "new era" that Mr. Zakaria most admires – "the free movement of capital," the international loans and investments he worships as "globalization's celestial mechanism for discipline." In point of fact, the rise of China and India – Mr. Zakaria's own paradigm cases – was possible only because those countries shunned global commercial credit markets in the 1970s, allowing them to avoid the interest-rate shock of the early '80s."
If you're squeezed for time, Senator Obama, take Thomas Franks advice.
As Franks writes: "How do I know this? It's all explained in a far more worthwhile new book, "The Predator State," by James K. Galbraith. At your next photo-op, Mr. Obama, I hope to see you half way through it."
And Senator Obama, when you have some time, Galbraith, Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker, Jared Bernstein are the economists you should be consulting and reading.
It is not Fareed Zakaria's book with his heroic "visionaries" like Goldman Sachs and others of that ilk whose greed and lobbying for little or no regulation so they can make billions more at the expense of regular hardworking Americans; with an assist from the deregulations and minimum or no oversight federal regulatory agencies under the Bush administration that has any merit other than how terribly wrong Zakaria is. These institutions and people all helped cause the economic catastrophe in which the US is trapped and floundering. Take no advice from Zakaria or his book.
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