William Greider is a journalist who writes mainly about economics, and is known for his book on globalization, One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism, his criticism of the Fed, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country, and more recently an examination of the 2008 financial crisis, Come Home, America.
The present struggle seems less about abolishing big government than about who gets to use it.
The [economic] system is not just broken and not just injured; it is collapsed. And as long as the government continues to play putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, I think it will fail. That's not an ideological statement. I think it's the reality.
The public wonders 'Why are you giving all this money to the people who caused this crisis and taking the money from the public assets of the victims?'
Everyone's values are defined by what they will tolerate when it is done to others.
As the world's finest democracy, we do not do guillotines. But there are other less bloody rituals of humiliation, designed to reassure the populace that order is restored, the Republic cleansed.
The economy is not governed with the bottom half in mind.
The threat to globalization is not the wasted American dollars but Washington's readiness to mix US commercial interests with its self-appointed role as global protector.
Animal-rights advocates remind us of this admonition: The ways in which people treat animals will be reflected in how people relate to one another.
The great, unreported story in globalization is about power, not ideology. It's about how finance and business regularly, continuously insert their own self-interested deals and exceptions into rules and agreements that are then announced to the public as "free trade".
The juggernaut -- the best and biggest military force in the world -- lumbers on, doing what it knows how to do best. It is unwilling to rethink its future, unable to let go of the past. Like the shark, it must keep feeding, only now it is feeding on itself.
Modern Americans are remarkably capable people, skillful and inventive in many ways, but they are not so good at talking to one another across their vast differences of social class and economic status.
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