Re: Alan Greenspan

[Bussardre@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/25/2007 9:24:03 AM Eastern Daylight Time,  
pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu writes:

Alan  Greenspan was interviewed on Democracy Now on Monday, and he 
laid out a  line of free market propaganda that should be taken as an 
insult to any  rational thinker; but notice how his line sounds so 
similar to Bill Gates  and the corporate standardistas

The question was put to him that, since  he had excoriated Clinton 
from his throne on the Federal Reserve that the  US gov't must 
exercise fiscal responsibility by cutting social spending  and 
reducing the deficit, then why did he not do the same to Bush for his  
fiscal profligacy on huge tax cuts for the rich as well as his 
massive  war spending.

His first answer was a rambling explanation that he had  always been 
consistent ever since the Reagan years in trying to maintain a  
certain level of federal gov't debt to keep the economy healthy.  He  
said he favored US gov't indebtedness at all times!!!  He always  
publicized that he feared a zero deficit.  Reallllly????

Then  he was asked how he felt about the massive increase in income 
disparity  between the rich and everybody else.  The example was given 
that top  corporate CEOs had earned an average of 40 times 
their  average  worker's salary at the beginning of the Reagan years 
(when Greenspan took  over the Fed), and now the difference is 400 times 
higher.

He said that  it's all the fault of the public schools.  Our 4th 
graders do pretty  well in international competitive tests, but by 
12th grade the US kids  bomb out.  The US school system cannot provide 
the educated workers  that the US economy needs, so he favors a 
relaxation of immigration for  educated foreigners (the HB-1 visas) so 
they can take the unfilled jobs,  and then if the US schools can 
better train our kids for these jobs there  will be more workers 
competing for these jobs and the salaries will drop,  and Voila!   WE 
WILL ELIMINATE INCOME DISPARITY.

Yes, by  LOWERING the average societal income (screwing everybody at 
the bottom)  without affecting the obscene wealth going to the CEOs

How stupid does  he think his audience is???  Oh, I forgot.....Bush 
got re-elected  with the same kind of propaganda

Pete  Farruggio

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Thanks, Pete, for your alert and comments.  Just  getting around to reading 
them because of a pretty hectic schedule the last two  weeks.
 
I have yet to  read Alan Greenspan’s book, The Age  of  Turbulence, but in a  
Sunday morning inteview, (Oct. 7)  on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, Greenspan again  
advocated throwing open the U.S.  borders for a massive influx of 
high-skilled immigrants as a means of  suppressing wages of high-skilled American jobs. 
In the next breath, he blames  the wages of these high-skilled workers for the 
great and widening economic  disparities in the United States.   
Not a word about  obscene corporate profits and CEO salaries, or fat fees 
paid to corporate board  members whose job it is to craft schemes to exploit 
American workers, including  cuts to benefits and overtime pay. 
The following excerpts from his book posted on the  Internet 
(see: _http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20789997/site/newsweek/page/0/_ 
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20789997/site/newsweek/page/0/) ) confirm the economic 
conspiracy to  suppress wages of the American worker dating back to at least the  
days when Ronald Regan named Greenspan Fed chair in 1987. It was  about this 
same time there was a huge push to place all schools on a  year-round calendar, 
which I am convinced is part of the wider scheme to provide  child care so 
the American worker with children will have no excuse to not  work a 10 to 
12-hour day and a 50 to 60-hour workweek--yet another way to  suppress wages and 
increase corporate profits.    And  apparently Bill Clinton  buys into 
Greenspan's views since he is so admired  by the former fed chair.  Frightening stuff 
for the future of our children  and the world. 
Here is the Greenspan excerpt. 
--Billee Bussard     
“The continuing  acceleration of the flow of workers to competitive markets 
during the past  decade has been a potent disinflationary force. That 
acceleration has depressed  wage growth and held down inflation virtually uniformly 
across the globe.”  “As  awesomely productive as market capitalism has proved to 
be, its Achilles' heel  is a growing perception that its rewards, 
increasingly skewed to the skilled,  are not distributed justly. Market capitalism on a 
global scale continues to  require ever-greater skills as one new technology 
builds on another. Given that  raw human intelligence is probably no greater 
today than in ancient Greece, our  advancement will depend on additions to the 
vast heritage of human knowledge  accumulated over the generations. A 
dysfunctional U.S. elementary and secondary  education system has failed to prepare our 
students sufficiently rapidly to  prevent a shortage of skilled workers and a 
surfeit of lesser-skilled ones,  expanding the pay gap between the two groups. 
Unless America's education system  can raise skill levels as quickly as 
technology requires, skilled workers will  continue to earn greater wage increases, 
leading to ever more disturbing  extremes of income concentration. Education 
reform will take years, and we need  to address increasing income inequality 
now. Increasing taxes on the rich, a  seemingly simple remedy, is likely to 
prove counterproductive to economic  growth. But by opening our borders to large 
numbers of highly skilled immigrant  workers, we would both enhance the skill 
level of the overall workforce and  provide a new source of competition for 
higher-earning employees, thus driving  down their wages. The popular acceptance 
of capitalist practice in the United  States will likely rest on these 
seemingly quite doable  reforms.”



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