The elites hate to acknowledge it, but when large numbers of ordinary people are moved to action, it changes the narrow political world where the elites call the shots. Inside accounts reveal the extent to which Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon's conduct of the Vietnam war was constrained by the huge anti-war movement. It was the civil rights movement, not compelling arguments, that convinced members of the US Congress to end legal racial discrimination.
In the next few weeks this country will make two decisions of great consequence: Will we send additional troops to Afghanistan? Will we reform our health care system?
It is both instructive and disheartening to see the different ways our policymakers approach these issues.
If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be “education.” In the 19th century, America led the way in universal basic education. Then, as other nations followed suit, the “high school revolution” of the early 20th century took us to a whole new level. And in the years after World War II, America established a commanding position in higher education.
Rescued from a state of near-irrelevance by the world recession and an infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars (mostly from the US, Europe and Japan), the International Monetary Fund (
IMF) is now thinking of
expanding its role into previously uncharted territory.
In Istanbul for the annual meeting of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director, said: "Given the
Last Friday's
job report showed that most of the US is experiencing enormous economic pain, even if America's economy is now in a recovery. Overall
unemployment rose to 9.8%, with the unemployment rate for men hitting a new post-depression high. The economy shed another 260,000 jobs in September and the previous figure for jobs lost in the recession was revised up by more than 800,000. The average workweek continues to shorten.
BACK IN THE MIDDLE AGES, shadowy figures known as alchemists claimed that they could turn lead into gold. We have alchemists today who don’t have to fake such miracles. We call them CEOs.
Our contemporary power-suited alchemists can turn sinking sales, falling profits, even global economic collapse into personal mega-million-dollar windfalls. They have discovered, in effect, the secret to perpetual income growth.
There are many possible responses to
the news that we have committed more than four trillion public dollars to Wall Street.
Mine is a roar of admiration.
Four trillion dollars! Holy hell! I didn't even know that was possible!
U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
Stocks are up. Ben Bernanke says that the recession is over. And I sense a growing willingness among movers and shakers to declare “Mission Accomplished” when it comes to fighting the slump. It’s time, I keep hearing, to shift our focus from economic stimulus to the budget deficit.
No, it isn’t. And the complacency now setting in over the state of the economy is both foolish and dangerous.
What if the Russians invaded?
It's not so far-fetched an idea, you know. We spent half a century and trillions of dollars to make sure that it would never happen, so it's really not such a strange notion.
So what if the Russians invaded?
What if they came and stole all of our money?
What if the Russians invaded and enslaved our children as cheap worker bee drones locked in dismal dead-end jobs?
What if the Russians invaded and excavated all of our natural resources, leaving only mountains of toxic debris in their wake?
During the real estate bubble, older urban neighborhoods across the nation, from Atlanta to Baltimore to Cleveland to Sacramento and countless communities in between fell victim to a devastating plague of predatory lending and mortgage fraud.
