Economist Jeffrey Sachs told CNNI we're at the end of Reagonomics

Sachs said Reagonomics had broken the back of the U.S. and that it was time for Americans to grow up. If they want a healthy govt, they're going to have to pay taxes for it, starting with the rich.

He is the most articulate spokesman re: the economic meltdown I've heard to date.

I can't remember the interviewer's name and can't find the video. At the end of the program the interviewer said he had the results of his on-line poll, asking "Who is the worst vice president in US history." He said that Aaron Burr had received several votes because he shot somebody, but that the winner had shot somebody, too.

Dick Cheney won the poll.

when it was announced the War was over.

They've all buried us in debt.

He helped to institute economic shock-deregulated free-market capitalism-in places like Poland and Russia, causing much harm to these countries. He was mentioned several times in Naomi Klein's book 'The Shock Doctrine'. She mentioned that he has had a kind of epiphany in the past 10 years or so.

Who should receive the credit for that turn-around?

During the 80s and 90s, Poland was "a Petri dish for a rapid and radical neoliberal economic makeover."

From this article:

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=15607&IBLOCK_ID=35

In Poland and Russia, radical free-market reforms were imposed by rapid-fire diktat after the shocking and disorientating collapse of communism, which left publics too dazed, uncertain, and indebted to insist upon remaking their economies according to, say, Solidarity’s vision of workers' cooperatives. In the cases of Poland and Russia, western-advised governments asked the public not only to abandon more populist paths of post-communist development, but to hand over their newly won democratic rights to those who knew best—the western shock docs.

In Poland, the “democracy-free moment” in which shock-therapy was administered ended with the downfall of Solidarity and a change of direction. In Russia, an opposition parliament similarly tried to reassert control, but failed. Instead, it was dissolved and shelled by Yeltsin’s tanks. In both cases, Klein shows, neoliberal reform was democracy's nemesis.

Poland was the first post-communist state outfitted for a Milton Friedman-designed electrode hat. It was a strange honor, considering the Solidarity movement began as a socialist revolt along the lines of Charter 77’s desire for “socialism with a human face.” Solidarity’s own slogan was, “Socialism—Yes; Its Distortions—No.” Uniting the movement wasn’t just a hatred of atheistic Russian rule, writes Klein, but a positive “radical vision for huge state-run companies…to break away from governmental control and become democratic workers’ cooperatives.”

But it wasn’t to be. The Solidarity government inherited enormous communist-era debts and a ruined economy; it needed help. Sensing opportunity in Poland’s crisis, the IMF and U.S. Treasury failed to offer Lech Walesa and his fellow union men-turned-politicians much assistance—the initial package was $119 million and a note of congratulations. That changed only after the Polish government agreed to be strapped to the gurney and bite a plastic bit while a few hundred volts coursed through its economy.

The man who flipped the metaphorical electricity switch on Poland was 34-year-old Harvard economist Jeffery Sachs.

Sachs arrived in Poland promising to deliver western aid to the Solidarity government in exchange for abandoning everything they believed—and had promised the Polish people. At first, Walesa and his colleagues were interested in hearing what Sachs had to say. But when he presented his shock-therapy program to the Solidarity leadership, it was aghast. After a bitter internal debate, the Solidarity leadership ultimately agreed and asked their supporters to join them in biting on the plastic bit. Poland proceeded to enact the policies called for in the Sachs plan: rapid privatization, cuts in subsidies, price liberalization, etc. The result was an almost immediate deepening of mass misery and a huge spike in strikes—from 250 at the beginning of the plan to 7,500 two years later. Solidarity was voted out of office in 1993, with Adam Michnik famously muttering, “The worst thing about communism is what comes after.”

plus, tar & feather the next twerp economist who utters the phrase 'trickle-down economics' as anything other than fantasy, then run him out of town on a rail?

...failure and catastrophe.

NGU.

...government is NOT the solution.

And just this week bush says government IS the solution. Reaganomics is dead.

for that reason....the complete failure of Reagan's economic plan.

... before the economic crisis. Now he's got nothing. 'Cept for his white skin.

How will McCain take it?

He's gonna be the white guy who lost to a black man.

'Course it happens all the time these days in sports. And McCain, on the surface will be a good sport, but the whispers.......

He figures he's lost the race, but he doesn't want to go to his grave being labeled a race baiter. I think he sincerely considers himself a step above the flies of the Ohio marketplace. Although he immediately told that retired female supporter that Obama wasn't an Arab--an about face from his usual taking adavantage other others' ignorance--Wolf Blitzer commented that McCain should have also said there was nothing wrong with being an Arab.

McCain may have more townhall opportunities to follow Wolf's suggestion.

will finally be over.

This is the beginning of a new era for Americans.

though the wingnuts may refuse service. :)

I have yet to see anyone send back their SS check.

We'll probably have a highly regulated private health insurance system as a transition to get people used to a universal system. Then about 2-3 years down the road, pull the trigger on a single-payor system by putting everyone into an expanded Medicare system.

in exchange for their lost retirement savings.

It's hard to imagine how wonderful it would feel to never have to worry that you wouldn't be able to afford to go to the doctor or hospital...or take your children to the doctor.

to prevent fascism. The goons have been defeated. Social Democracy will return and spread to the US.

Still Bush and Paulsen are trying to hold out re partial nationalization of banks and that will stall reforms for a while. Making that decision has grave implication for McPalin who are still screaming about putting government in Grover's bathtub.

Morgan Stanley may create some more panic tomorrow.

for most of the post-reagan years..( yes, I include Clinton's terms too)..

By conferring sainthood on Reagan, and rewriting history, the republicans have had carte blanche to run amok with our money..

NEVER trust republicans with your money...

just like w/Bush.

where is Cheney these days, anyway?

Or Poppy to defend his beleaguered son?

What, it took only about 25 years and billions of jobs and dollars lost before it died?

Anybody with any kind of sense saw it for what it was back in 1980.

The interview isn't online yet, but perhaps soon. It was well worth a listen.

http://search.cnn.com/search?query=Fareed%20Zakaria%20GPS&type=news&sortBy=date&intl=true

n/t

I'd never heard of Sachs, but he was very listen-able and mirrored my own views. I can only hope his comments have the same effect on other voters.

Maybe Sachs has some repenting to do, like Lieberman.

Yippee :eyes:

1984-1992: +$1 per hour

1992-2000: +$6 per hour

2000-2008: +$1 per hour (all increase acheived 10/07/08)

The show is on CNN, and is called Sareed Zackaras GPS, I think. You can probably find it by going to CNN.com.:hi:

Before we can afford to pay as we go, we're going to have to run a deficit for a while. Deficits + government spending = the formula for climbing out of recession/depression.

or out on the streets after this thing passed, which is my take on why they gave reporters in the Army Times the story about army battalions w/ terrifying crowd control weapons being stationed in the U.S. w/ crowd control as part of their mission. (Notice the stories were published just before Congress was informed of the urgent necessity for the bailout and were "corrected" immediately after no protests materialized.) Cowing the populace must have been much easier than they expected. The lack of significant reactions beyond angry blog posts (I mean everyone, not just DUers) does allow the bailout to go ahead w/o even token concessions to the taxpayers or any restraint on asset pricing.

I know this sounds like old-fogeyism, but forty years ago we definitely wouldn't have waited for the politicians to fix things, even liberal politicians. No way would this have gone by w/o a massive mobilization, especially given the enormous majority in opposition. Restricting political expression solely to the virtual world just doesn't strike me as progress. That would have been the same as though 40 years ago we had stopped at informational newsletters and leafletting. Saying that the old way didn't fix things is a canard. Evil will always be with us; no action or election will end the struggle once and for all. I think we did better at harm reduction and containment back them. Except for a few brave souls like Marcy Kaptur and Brad Sherman, politicians almost always do their best leading from behind.

beginning October 1?

They say it's for "terrorist attacks." Using McCain and Palin's loose interpretation, an Obama win could fall under that umbrella.

I doubt even they think they could succeed in an overt military coup, which is what you are describing. My best guess is that that is liberal hysteria which obscures the actual success of their mission of intimidation. After cleaning out every scrap of spending power the U.S. has at a time when money is desperately needed for job stimulus and Baby Boomer retirement benefits, they are most likely only too happy to let a Democratic government in to take the fall.

As of a day or two after the bailout passed, the Army Times "corrected" their reporting to say that the brigade would not be used on U.S. citizens at all (probably in response to a call from their original gov't source). No mention is made of exceptions for crowd control during a "terrorist attack". I think you can relax about war on the streets, but not about masses of starving, homeless old people out there who contributed tens of thousands of dollars each to the retirement system that Bushco gutted. Remember that if Gore had been seated as President, Social Security would have been safe in a "lockbox".

From another interview on Friday:
Sachs: One can see the end of the housing bubble. One can see the banking crisis. One can see the mistake of how Lehman Bros. was allowed to go under and how that created panic in the short term around world markets. That was a very big mistake.

What is true, however, like Franklin Roosevelt so famously said, sometimes what you really have to fear is fear itself. That's what we have right now. We need political leadership to put a floor under this because we don't have to go into collapse. We will go into a downturn, but we don't need a collapse, and leadership can help stop us from going into collapse.
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AM: FDR also said he was going to fix the crisis in 1932 by bold, persistent experimentation. Do we need that?

Sachs: We're going to need a different kind of economic philosophy from the one that we've had for many, many years. The idea of no government and deregulation, that is passe. We're going to need an active government that's addressing core challenges of energy, of infrastructure, of health, that's addressing these financial problems as well. It's a new economic age, it's a new economic philosophy. The old one is out the door.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/10/economy.qanda/

it's head-slapping that so many Americans can think no government is a good thing. What that led to was a fleecing of everyone's pocketbook. But as Bush said, it's the American taxpayers' money, and they know how to manage it best!

Yeah, right.

http://www.rintintin.com/



Bonzo Economics Bites, where the sun don't shine...Don't ever send a chimp to do a man's job...again.

Look all the way back to U S Grant and you will find a downturn in the American quality of life came with every republican administration. Bleeding America dry, does not protect the country.

the irony