Outstanding summary of a vitally important issue to all Americans, March 7, 2010
| By | Sidewalk Sam "(History-is-not-bunk)" (Pizen Bluff, USA) - See all my reviews |
American economy is in such a mess. I use the term missing to indicate the almost non-existence of mention in the Main Stream Media.
First it is important to understand who Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Virginia and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan. He was formally an editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, etc. and has written several books on a wide range of topics.
Given his conservative background, his harsh criticism of corporate greed and outright lies pushed by Big Business (and it's shills and apologists in academia and government) lends added credibility to his words.
This book is an organized collection of his columns (Part 1) that deal with the American Economic Crisis we find ourselves in and how we got there. While some of his earlier columns (going back about 5 years) may appear slightly dated, it's interesting to watch his predictions (particularly those about Unregulated Derivatives as a disaster just waiting to happen) come true.
And by the way Derivatives are STILL unregulated! Talk about corruption and malfeasances in high places. I don't think they have even re-instituted the uptick rule on short sellers (this was a rule passed after the crash of 1929 to force traders to wait for the stock to go up a little before they could short it again)
Like many of the other post 1929 laws and regulations, quietly tossed aside as "antiquated and unnecessary".
Later in the book, Part 2 is devoted to an explanation in ordinary language of why free trade doesn't actually always create the win-win scenario that it's boosters insist on. Also a very important explanation of why Outsourcing is not really free trade at all. And insourcing (replacing American workers with cheaper foreign workers) is not free trade by any stretch of the imagination.
Overall, Dr. Roberts has chosen several themes that cluster around the failure of this nation's government to protect it's citizens.
- The outsourcing of manufacturing and good blue-collar jobs, among its other nasty effects, threatens to destroy the middle class. One chapter deals extensively with the soaring income disparity that is developing in America (one of the classic hallmarks of a Third World Nation)
- The death of American manufacturing and the outsourcing of Research & Development jobs to India and China and the insourcing of professional jobs here in America, are destroying the career opportunities in engineering and technical fields for our own children. Even before the current economic collapse many American engineering graduates could not find work.
As he says in one chapter - "the United States is the first country in history to destroy the prospects and living standards of its own working people"
On American firms openly advertising for foreign engineers on H-1b visas (or using slippery tricks to get around the few laws that protect American workers) he says;
- "What kind of country gives preference to foreigners over its own engineering graduates?....How much longer will parents shell out $100,000 for a college education for a son or a daughter who ends up employed as a bartender, waitress or temp?"
This erosion of America's future has gone so far that American venture capital firms - which are the usual source for funds for start-ups, are pressuring American entrepreneurs to do their starting up in Asia! You can hire a university graduate in India for $240 a month.
When a proponent of Free Trade tells you that it actually benefits America, ask them "Show me the numbers. Where exactly are those wonderful jobs that Americans are going to do in a de-industrialized country? Show me in the governments own Labor Statistics."
In an October column he adds that the good jobs that Americans usually come back to after a slump is over are no longer there. American corporations are taking advantage of this downturn to permanently lay off even more American and then quietly transfer those exact jobs overseas. Hard times are ahead for America.
We (as a nation) are about to drive off a cliff. Our political, business and academic leadership is either in denial or urging us to go along this road even faster. A major course change is clearly needed and the American people are waking up to it at last.
Here is a book that can give them some of the intellectual ammunition needed to fight off the entrenched special interests.
