Noam Chomsky: Who Owns the World? Resistance and Ways Forward

what I was thinking about these remarks I had two topics in mind couldn't decide between them actually pretty obvious ones one topic is what are the most important issues that we face the second topic is what issues are not being treated seriously or at all in the quadrennial frenzy now underway called an election but I realized that there's no problem it's not a hard choice they're the same topic and there are reasons for it which are very significant in themselves I'd like to return to that in a moment but first a few words on the background beginning with the announced title who owns the world actually good answer to this was given years ago by Adam Smith someone we're supposed to worship with but not read he was a little subversive when you read him sometimes he was referring to the most powerful country in the world in his day and of course the country that interested him namely England and he pointed out that in England the principal architects of policy are those who own the country the merchants and manufacturers in his day and he said they make sure to design policy so that their own interests are most peculiarly attended to their interests are served by policy however Grievous the impact on others including the people of England but he was an old-fashioned conservative with moral principles so he added the victims of England the victims of these what he called the savage and justice of the Europeans particularly in well he had no illusions about the honors so to quote him again all for ourselves and nothing for other people seems in every age of the world to have been the vile Maxim of the masters of mankind was true then it's true Dell Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline by the end of World War two the dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea the United States by far the most powerful and wealthy Society in world history Britain could only aspire to be its junior partner as the British Foreign Office ruefully recognized at that point 1945 the United States had literally half the world's wealth incredible security controlled the entire western hemisphere both oceans the opposite sides of both oceans is nothing there has never been anything like that in history and planners understood it Roosevelt's planners were meeting right through the Second World War designing the post-war world they were quite sophisticated about it and their plans were pretty much implemented they wanted to make sure that the United States would control what they called a grand area which would include routinely the entire Western Hemisphere the entire Far East the former British Empire which US would be taking over and as much of Eurasia as possible crucially its commercial and industrial centers in Western Europe and within this region they said the United States hold unquestioned power with military and economic supremacy while ensuring the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by states that might interfere with these global designs and those were pretty realistic plans at the time given the enormous disparity of power the US had been them by far the richest country in the world even before the Second World War although it wasn't was not yet the major global actor it during the Second World War the United States gained enormous ly industrial production almost quadrupled got us out of the depression meanwhile industrial rivals were devastated or seriously weakened so that was an unbelievable system of power actually the policies that were outlined then still hold you can read them in government pronouncements but the capacity to implement them has significantly declined actually there's a major theme now in foreign policy discussion you know journals and so on the theme is called American decline so for example in the most prestigious establishment international relations journal Foreign Affairs a couple of months ago that was an issue which had on the front cover and big bold letters is America over question mark that's announcing the theme of the issue and there's a standard caller corollary to this the power is shifting to the west to China and India the rising world powers which are going to be the hegemonic States of the future actually I think the decline the decline is quite real but some serious qualifications are in order first of all the corollary is highly unlikely least in the foreseeable future that China in India are very poor countries just take a look at say the Human Development Index of the United Nations they're way down there China's around 90th I think in these around one hundred and twentieth or so last time I looked and they have tremendous internal problems demographic problems extreme poverty hopeless inequality ecological problems China's great manufacturing center but it's actually mostly an assembly plant so it assembles parts and components high technology that comes from the surrounding industrial sent more advanced industrial centers Japan Taiwan South Korea Singapore the United States Europe and basically assembles them so say you buy a one of these eye things you know an iPad from China that it's called an export from China but the parts and components and technology come from outside and the value-added in China is miniscule it's been calculated they'll move up the technology ladder but it's a hard climb in the even harder well so I think one should be skeptical about the corollary but there's another qualification it's more serious the decline is real but it's not new it's got been going on since 1945 in fact it happened very quickly in the late 1940s there's an event that's known here as the loss of China the China became independent that's a loss of a huge piece of the grand area of Asia and it became a major issue in American domestic policy who's responsible for the loss of China a lot of recriminations and so on actually the phrase is kind of interesting like I can't lose your computer right because I don't own it I can lose my computer well the phrase loss of China kind of presupposes a deeply held principle of a kind of American a leak consciousness we own the world and if some piece of it becomes independent we've lost it and that's a terrible loss we got to do something about it it's it's never questioned which is interesting in itself well right about the same time around 1950 concerns developed about the loss of Southeast Asia that's what led the United States into the Indochina Wars and the worst atrocities of the post-war period partly lost partly not very significant event in modern history was in 1965 when the in Indonesia which was the main concern that's the country of Southeast Asia with most of the wealth and resources there was a coupe military coup in Indonesia it Suharto coup it led to an extraordinary massacre what the New York Times called a staggering mass slaughter killed hundreds of thousands of people mostly landless peasants destroyed the only mass political party and opened the country up to Western exploitation euphoria and the West was so enormous that it couldn't be contained so in the New York Times describing the staggering mass slaughter called it a gleam of light in Asia it was a column written by James Reston the leading liberal thinker in the times and the same elsewhere Europe Australia was a fantastic event years later McGeorge Bundy who was the national security adviser for Kennedy and Johnson in retrospect he pointed out that probably would have been a good idea to end the Vietnam War at that point to pull out contrary to a lot of illusions the Vietnam War was fought Merilee to ensure that an independent Vietnam would not develop successfully and become a model for other countries in the region would not to borrow Henry Kissinger's terminology speaking about Chile we have to prevent it the what they call that he called the virus of independent development from spreading contagion elsewhere that's a critical part of American foreign policy since the second world war Britain France others to a lesser degree and by 1965 that was over Vietnam was South Vietnam was virtually destroyed the word spread to the rest of China wasn't going to be a model for anyone and the contagion was contained there were the Suharto regime made sure that Indonesia wouldn't be infected and pretty soon the US had dictatorships in every country of the region at Marcos and Philippines dictatorship in Thailand's China and South Park and South Korea it was no problem about the infection so that would have been a good time to end the Vietnam War he felt well that's Southeast Asia but the decline continues the last ten years has been a very important event the loss of South America for the first time in five hundred years the south and since that conquistadors the South American countries have begun to move towards independence and a degree of integration the typical structure of one of the South American countries was a tiny very rich westernized elite often white or mostly white and a huge mass of horrible poverty countries separated from one another oriented for each oriented towards its you know either Europe or more recently the United States last ten years that's been overcome significantly beginning to integrate the prerequisite for independence of even beginning to face some other horrendous internal problems that's the loss of South America one sign is that the United States has been driven out of every single military base in South America trying to restore a few but right now there are none well moving on to just last year the Arab Spring is another such threat it threatens to take that big region out of the grand area that's a lot more significant than Southeast Asia or South America go back to the 1940s the State Department recognized that the energy resources of the Middle East are what they call the one of the greatest material prizes in world history a spectacular source of strategic power if we can control Middle East energy we can control the world they take a look at the u.s. you could bridge to and Iran in 1953 very important event its shadow cast over the world until today that was was a pretense that it was a part of the Cold War had nothing to with Cold War what it had to do was the usual fear independent nationalism and wasn't even concerned with access to oil or profits it was concerned with control control of the oil resources of Iran and in fact of the region and that's a theme that runs right through policy decisions not discussed much but it's very important to have control exactly as State Department pointed advisors pointed out in the 40s if you can control the oil you can control most of the world and that goes on so far the threat of the Arab Spring has been pretty well contained in the oil dictatorships which are the most important ones for the west every effort to join the Arab Spring has just been crushed by force Saudi Arabia was so extreme that when there was an effort to you know go out into the streets the security presence was so enormous that people were even afraid to go out there's a little discussion of what goes on in Bahrain where it's been crushed but Eastern Saudi Arabia it was much worse the Emirates totally controlled so that's okay we managed to ensure that the threat of democracy would be smashed in the most important places Egypt is an interesting case it's important country not oil producer it is a small one but in Egypt the United States followed a standard operating procedure maybe if you're going into the diplomatic service you might as well learn it there's a standard procedure when one of your favorite dictators gets into trouble first you support them as long as possible but if it becomes really impossible say the army turns against him then you send them out to pasture and get the intellectual class to issue ringing declarations about your love of democracy and then try to restore the old system as much as possible this case after case of that Somoza and Nicaragua de Vega in Haiti and Marcos and the Philippines it's shown in South Korea Bhutto in the Congo over and over them it takes genius not to see it and that's exactly what was done in in Egypt than what France tried to do not quite with as much success in Tunisia well the future is uncertain but the threat of democracy so far is contained and it's a real threat I'll return to that it's also the record important to recognize that the decline over the past 50 years is to a significant extent self-inflicted particularly since the seven days I'll go back to that too but first let me say a couple of things about the issues that are most important today and that are being ignored or not dealt seriously dealt with seriously and the electoral campaigns for good reasons so let me start with the most important issues there are two of these there of overwhelming significance because the fate of the species depends on them the one is environmental disaster the others nuclear war I'm not going to take much time reviewing the threats of environmental disaster actually there on the front pages almost daily so for example last week the New York Times at a front-page story with the headline ending its summer melt Arctic sea ice it's a new low that leads to warnings the melting this summer was fast far faster than it was predicted by the sophisticated computer models and the most recent United Nations report that's now predicted that the summer ice it might be gone by 2020 it was assumed before that it may be 2050 they quoted scientists who said this is a prime example of the built-in conservatism of our climate forecasts as dire the warnings are about the long-term consequences of heat-trapping emissions many of us fear that they may still be on us under estimating the speed and severity of the pending changes after there's a climate change study program at MIT where I am they've been worrying about this for years and repeatedly have been proven right The Times report discusses briefly the severe attack the severe impact of all of the sudden the global climate and it adds but governments have not responded to the change with any greater urgency about limiting greenhouse emissions to the contrary their main response has been to plan for exploitation of newly accessible minerals in the Arctic including drilling for more oil that is to accelerate the catastrophe that's quite interesting it demonstrates an extraordinary willingness to sacrifice the lives of our children and grandchildren for short-term gain or perhaps an equally remarkable willingness to shut our eyes so as not to see impending peril those things you sometimes find with young infants something looks dangerous close my eyes and won't look at it well there is another possibility I mean maybe humans are somehow trying to fulfill a prediction of great American biologists who died recently Ernst Meier now he argued years ago that intelligence seems to be a lethal mutation he and he had some pretty good evidence there's a notion of biological success which is how many of you are there around you know that's biological success they pointed out that if you look at the tens of billions of species in human world history the ones that are very successful are the ones that mutate very quickly like bacteria are the ones that have a fixed ecological niche like beetles they seem to make out fine but as you move up the scale of what we call intelligence success declines steadily when you get up to mammals it's very very few of them around there's a lot of cows it's only because we domesticate them when you get to humans it's the same till very recently much too recent that time to show up in any evolutionary accounting the humans were very scattered there were plenty of other hominids but they disappeared probably because humans exterminated them but nobody knows for sure anyhow maybe we're trying to trying to show that humans just fit into the general pattern we can exterminate ourselves to the rest of the world with us and we're hell-bent on it right now well let's turn to the elections of both political parties demand that we make the problem worse in 2008 both party flat platforms devoted some space to how the government should address climate change today the in the Republican platform the issue is essentially disappeared but the platform does demand that Congress take quick action to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases so let's make sure to make it worse and it also demands that we open the Alaska's Arctic refuge to drilling I'm quoting now in order to take advantage of all of our American god-given resources can't disobey God after all on environmental policy the program says we must restore scientific integrity to our public research institutions and remove political incentives from publicly funded research oh that's a code word for climate science stop funding climate science Romney himself says there's no scientific consensus so we should support more debate and investigation within the scientific community but no action except to act to make the problems worse well what about the Democrats they concede that there is a problem and advocate that we should work toward an agreement to set emissions limits in unison with other emerging powers but that's it no action and in fact as Obama has emphasized we have to work hard to gain what he calls a hundred years of energy independence by exploiting domestic or Canadian resources by fracking and other elaborate technologies it doesn't ask what the world would look like in a hundred years so there are differences that the differences are basically about how enthusiastically the lemmings should march towards the cliff let's turn to the second major issue in nuclear war it's also on the front pages daily but in a way that would seem outlandish to some independent observer the viewing what's going on on earth and in fact does seem outlandish to a considerable majority of the countries of the world the current threat not for the first time is in the Middle East focusing on Iran the general picture in the West is very clear it's far too dangerous to allow Iran to reach what's called nuclear capability that is the capability enjoyed by many powers and dozens of them to produce nuclear weapons if they decide to do so as to whether they've decided US intelligence says it doesn't know the International Atomic Energy Agency just produced its most recent report a couple weeks ago and it concludes or quoted it cannot demonstrate the absence of an undeclared undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran that is it can't demonstrate something which cannot a condition that can't be satisfied there's no way to demonstrate the absence of the work that's convenient for Iran must be denied the right to enrich uranium that's guaranteed to every power that signed a non-proliferation treaty well that's the picture in the West it's not the picture in the rest of the world as you know I'm sure there was just a meeting of the non-aligned movement that's large majority of the countries in the world and of representing most of the world's population a meeting in Tehran and once again not for the first time they issued a ringing declaration of support for Iran's right to enrich uranium right that every country has that signed the non-proliferation treaty pretty much the same is true in the Arab world that's interesting I'll return to that in a moment there is a basic reason for the concern it was expressed succinctly by General Lee Butler he's the former head of the US Strategic Command which controls nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy now he wrote that it is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East one nation should arm itself with nuclear weapons which may inspire other nations to do so general Butler however was not referring to Iran he was referring to Israel the country that ranks highest in European polls as the most dangerous country in the world right above Iran and not incidentally in the Arab world where the public regard the United States as the second most dangerous country right after Israel in the Arab world Iran though disliked that ranks far lower as a threat among the populations that is not the dictatorships with regard to Iranian nuclear weapons nobody wants them to have them but in many polls majority sometimes considerable majorities said that the region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons to balance those of their major threats now there's a lot of commentary and the Western media journal is about our attitudes towards Iran and what you read commonly is that the Arabs want decisive action against Iran which is true of the dictators it's not true of the populations but who cares about the populations what are called disparagingly the Arab Street don't care about them that's a reflection of the extremely deep contempt for democracy among Western elites I mean so deep that it can't be perceived you know it's just kind of like reflexive this study of popular attitudes in our world and there is very extensive study by Western polling agencies it reveals very quickly why the US and its allies are so concerned about the threat of democracy and are doing what they can to prevent it they certainly don't want attitudes like those I've just indicated to be become policy well of course issuing arousing statements about our passionate dedication to democracy those are relayed obediently by reporters and commentators well unlike Iran Israel refuses to allow inspections at all that refuses to join the non-proliferation treaty has hundreds of nuclear weapons as advanced delivery systems also it has a long record of violence and repression it has annexed and settled conquered territories illegally violation of Security Council orders many acts of aggression five times against Lebanon alone no credible pretext New York Times yesterday you can read that the Golan Heights are disputed territory Syrian Golan Heights there is a UN Security Council resolution 497 which is unanimous declaring Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights illegal and demanding that it be rescinded and in fact it's disputed only in Israel and in the New York Times which in fact is reflecting actual US policy not formal US policy Iran has a record of aggression to it in the last several hundred years it has invaded and conquered a couple of Arab islands that was under the Shah us imposed dictator with us support it's actually the only case in several hundred years meanwhile the severe threats of attack continue you've just been hearing them at the UN from the United States but particularly Israel there is a reaction to this at the highest level in the United States Leon Panetta Secretary of Defense he said that we don't want to attack Iran we hope that Israel won't attack Iran about Israel's a sovereign country and they have to make their own decisions about what they'll do you might ask what the reaction would be if you reverse the cast of characters and those of you who have antiquarian interests it might remember that there's a document called the United Nations Charter and foundation of modern international law which bars the threat or use of force in international affairs there are two rogue States United States and Israel which for whom which regard that yet the Charter and international law is just boring irrelevance so do what they like and that's accepted well these are not just words there is an ongoing war includes terrorism fascination of nuclear scientists includes economic war us threats national ones us threats have cut Iran out of the international financial system Western military analysts identify what they call weapons of finance as acts of war that justify violent response when they're directed against us that is cutting Iran out of global financial markets is different the United States is openly carrying out extensive cyber war against Iran that's praised the Pentagon regards cyber war as an equivalent of an armed attack which justifies military response but that's of course when it's directed against us the leading liberal figure in the State Department Harold Koh is the top State Department legal adviser he says that cyber war is an act of war if it results in significant destruction like the attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities and such acts he says justify force in self-defense but of course he means only attacks against the United States or its clients well Israel's lethal armory which is enormous includes advanced submarines recently provided by Germany these are capable of carrying Israel's nuclear tipped missiles and these are sure to be deployed and the Persian Gulf or nearby if Israel proceeds with its plans to bomb Iran or more likely I suspect to try to set up conditions in which the United States will do so and the United States of course as a vast array of nuclear weapons all over the world but surrounding the region from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean including enough firepower in the Persian Gulf to destroy most of the world another story that's in the news right now is the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi reactor in Osirak which is suggested as a model for Israeli bombing of Iran it's rarely mentioned however that the bombing of the O's Arak reactor didn't end Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program it initiated it there was no program before it and the O's Arak reactor was not capable of producing uranium for nuclear weapons but of course after the bombing Saddam immediately turned to developing a nuclear weapons program and if Iran is bombed it's almost certain to proceed just as Saddam Hussein did after the Osirak bombing well in a few weeks we'll be commemorating the 50th anniversary of the most dangerous moment in human history those are the words of the historian Kennedy advisor Arthur Schlesinger is referring of course to the October 1962 Missile Crisis the most dangerous moment in human history others agree at that time Kennedy raised the nuclear alert to the second-highest level just short of launching weapons he authorized NATO aircraft with Turkish or other pilots to take off fly to Moscow and drop bombs setting off a likely nuclear conflagration at the peak of the missile crisis Kennedy estimated the probability of nuclear war at perhaps 50% it's a war that would destroy the northern hemisphere President Eisenhower had warned and facing that risk Kennedy refused to agree publicly to an offer by her chef to end the crisis by simultaneous withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba and u.s. missiles from Turkey these were obsolete missiles they were already being replaced by invulnerable flower submarines but it was felt necessary to firmly establish the principle that Russia has no right to have any offensive weapons anywhere beyond the borders of the USSR even to defend an ally against us attack that's now recognized to be the prime reason for deploying missiles there and actually a plausible one meanwhile the United States must retain the right to have them all over the world at targeting Russia or China or any other enemy in fact in 1962 the united stry cently learned the united states had just secretly deployed nuclear missiles to okinawa aimed at china it was a moment of elevated regional tensions all that is very consistent with grand area conceptions the ones I mentioned that were developed by Roosevelt's planners well fortunately in 1962 core shift back down but the world can't be assured of such sanity forever and particularly threatening my view is that intellectual opinion and even scholarship a hail Kennedy's behavior as his finest hour my own view is is one of the worst moments in history inability to face the truth about ourselves is all too common a feature of the intellectual cultural so personal life as ominous implications well ten years later in 1973 during the Israel Arab war the Henry Kissinger called a high-level nuclear alert the purpose was to warn the Russians to keep hands off while he was so we have recently learned he was secretly informing Israel that they were authorized to violate the ceasefire that had been imposed joint by the US and Russia when Reagan came into office a couple of years later the United States launched operations probing Russian defenses flying into Russia to probe defenses and simulating air and naval attacks I mean while placing Pershing missiles in Germany that had a five minute flight time to Russian targets they were providing what the CIA called a super sudden first strike capability the Russians not surprisingly were deeply concerned actually that led to a major war scare in 1983 there have been hundreds of cases when human intervention aborted a first strike launched just minutes before launch that's after automated systems gave false alarms that we don't have Russian records but there's no doubt that their systems are far more accident-prone not just a near miracle that nuclear war has been avoided so far meanwhile India and Pakistan have come close to nuclear war several times and the crises that led to that especially Kashmir remain both India and Pakistan have refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty along with Israel and both of them have received US support for development of their nuclear weapons programs actually until today in the case of India which is now a US ally war threats in the Middle East which could become reality very soon once again escalate to dangers well fortunately there's a way out of this a simple way is a way to mitigate maybe end whatever threat Iran is alleged to pose very simple move towards establishing a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East the opportunities coming again this December there's an international conference scheduled to deal with this proposal it has overwhelming international support including it's an early majority of the population in Israel that's fortunately unfortunately it's blocked by the United States and Israel a couple of days ago Israel announced that it's not going to participate and it won't consider the matter until there's a general regional peace Obama takes the same stand now he also insists that any agreement must exclude Israel and even must exclude the calls for other nations meaning the u.s. to provide information about Israeli nuclear activities the United States and Israel can delay regional peace indefinitely they've been doing that for 35 years on Israel Palestine virtual International isolations a long important story that I don't have time to go into here so therefore there's no hope for an easy way to end what the West regards as the most severe current crisis in no way unless there's large-scale public pressure but the can't be large-scale public pressure unless people at least know about it and the media have done a stellar job in averting that danger nothing reported about the conference or about any of the background no discussion apart from specialist arms control journals where you can read about it so that blocks the easy way to end the worst existing crisis unless people somehow find a way to break through this well turning to the election there's unanimity and ignoring all of this not a word the only issue discussed is should the United States agree with Israel's position Israel's position is that the US should establish a red line the red line should be Iranian capability to produce nuclear weapons the capability that vast number of countries have so if they reach capability we should mama that's Israel's position it's also the position of the US Senate a couple of days ago the Senate declared ninety to one the one exception was rent Ron Paul ninety to one that the United States must accept Israel's position establish a red line at capability contrary to the white house well that's the most important international issues there are also quite crucial domestic issues the most serious is that there are roughly twenty three million people unemployed underemployed or just given up now that's a real catastrophe and for the people themselves you know their lives are destroyed and families are destroyed and for the economy huge resources not being used that does enter the elections the Republicans have an answer to this and we should enrich the rich you don't use the word rich anymore there's a euphemism there called the job creators they don't create any jobs but that's the way it refer to the rich sometimes they called the makers not the takers so who are the takers well that's easy the big banks for example or enormous takers now they get thirty billion dollars a year from just the government insurance policy alone too-big-to-fail policy some estimated at about sixty billion dollars the super-rich are incredible takers so they take a look at just at tax breaks tax breaks amount to more than seven percent of GDP gross domestic product that's two fifths as large as the entire federal government the tech breaks are overwhelmingly regressive favoring the rich and how do they achieve that nice outcome by lobbying heavily and systematically and systematically contributing to political campaign I'm quoting that radical rag foreign affairs' there are many other regressive devices patent laws designed to radically increase the price of drugs and others research and development procurement or techniques for enriching the private sector particularly significant since the 1970s a big change in the way the economy works then particularly since significant since then our financial institutions there is a role for banks in a state capitalist economy so for example what a bank is supposed to do is and take your deposit and decide to lend it to somebody who wants to do something with it like you know buy a car send the kids to college and start a business buy a house whatever it might be that's the function of banks and it was pretty well filled that during the great growth period sometimes called the golden age the 50s and 60s enormous growth period pretty egalitarian that's pretty much what banks were doing that at that time the New Deal legislation still prevailed including fair amount of regulations so there were no financial crises since the 1970s that's all changed there's been a huge explosion of financial institutions mostly dedicated to financial manipulations that take a look at the business pages of the New York Times today there's a big debate about whether there should be some regulation on superfast automated trading you know we even cut a trade by you know microsecond or something and maybe beat somebody else out which is causing all kinds of problems and Europe and Australia and Canada are trying to clamp down on it the United States is hanging back with there's plenty of this by 2007 the financial institutions that literally reach 40% of corporate profits well what's the impact of this on the economy actually before the recent crash there was a very little study of it the reason is there was there's a kind of a religious doctrine the doctrine is markets know best so it had to be beneficial so if you're well trained economists just don't look at it after the crash there was a kind of a change of mood somewhat so prominent international economists wrote them quoting that an emerging consensus is developing among economists on the need for macro Prudential supervision of financial markets there's growing recognition that our financial system is running a doomsday cycle whenever it fails we rely on lacks money and fiscal policies to bail it out this response teaches the financial sector or lesson take large Gamble's to get paid handsomely and don't worry about the costs they'll be paid by the taxpayers through bailouts and lost jobs and the financial system is just is thus resurrected to gamble again and to fail again quoting Barry Eichengreen and Simon Johnson economists among you will know that they are among the most respected financial and international economists the system is a Doom loop in the words of the official of the Bank of England who's responsible for financial stability after the crisis a number of very prominent economists did start to write about it there's a issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that had articles by Benjamin Friedman at Harvard Robert Solow at MIT s Nobel laureate they both pointed out that there hadn't been much in the way of study of the impact of financial institutions didn't say why but the reason is the religion and they said when you look at they started said if you look at it carefully it looks like they are imposing significant costs on the economy the most respected financial commentator and english-speaking world the Martin wolf Financial Times he went well beyond that he said the out-of-control financial sector is eating out the modern market economy from inside just as the larvae of the spider wasp eats out the host in which it's been laid banks as presently constituted and managed cannot be trusted to perform any publicly important function today's banks represent the incarnation of profit seeking behavior taken to its logical limits in which the only question asked by the senior staff is what can they get away with that's not a spokesperson for the Occupy movement it's the most respected financial correspondent in the english-speaking world quite conservative Martin wolf there's a study by two leading economists one a Nobel laureate Paul Romer and George Akerlof who found that the most lucrative strategy for executives at big banks would be to loot them to pay themselves vast rewards knowing full well that the government meaning the taxpayer will move in and save them from bankruptcy that was 20 years ago it's a lot worse today there are some limited steps to try to deal with this but they're being beaten back by armies of lobbyists well that's the takers what about the makers working people they're under constant attack fiscal policies and trade policies are designed to undermine manufacturing to set workers in competition with each other around the world with the poorest to drive down wages meanwhile protect professionals they're given all kinds of protections they're not supposed to compete unions are under terrific attack that's been going on since the 1940s but the last generation has been very harsh employers have been basically told that they can violate the laws of at will and of course you're following Clinton that was Reagan Clinton which led to about a tripling of firing of organizers illegally Clinton added his own method it was called NAFTA NAFTA gave opportunities for employers to threaten to move plants to Mexico in order to brake strikes that's illegal of course but when you have a criminal state it's fine to act illegally that under a NAFTA study that led to a very sharp increase in braking strikes illegally by now they practically don't exist private sector unionization is down to about seven percent public workers have so far defended themselves but they are under terrific attack time to go into it but I should mention that Obama takes part in it all of this is it has been accelerated under a strong right-wing backlash that took place backlash against the 60s that took place from the early 70s major change in the nature of the economy towards financialization leading to what I described and offshoring that led very quickly to concentration of wealth concentration of wealth leads to concentration of political power or almost reflexively that leads to legislation to enhance the process the vicious cycle fiscal policy deregulation rules of corporate governance quite a lot so the vicious cycle goes on and it leads to what in the Occupy slogan which is now become prevalent the one percent ninety nine percent distinction actually one percent is wrong it's more like 0.1 percent versus the rest if you actually look at income distributions highly concentrated in a fraction of one percent CEOs hedge fund manager and so on for the majority its stagnation and decline meanwhile costs of elections of skyrocketed Supreme Court just has given its help a couple of times there are studies of what the outcome my very good political scientists the most recent one good book by Martin gilens concludes that seventy percent of the public are powerless to shape government policy it's phrased I mean while the rich get what they want and the mechanisms are by all means obscure this has changed the political parties the Republicans some time ago abandoned any pretense of being a normal parliamentary party they are just dedicated lockstep with a kind of catechism that everyone has to repeat towards service to the super-rich and the corporate sector you can't get votes that way so they've been compelled to mobilize sectors of the population that have always been there and are substantial but we're never politically mobilized before the United States says you know is a unusually religious fundamentalist religious country off the international spectrum I mean almost half the population thinks the world was created a couple of thousand years ago with all the fossils and everything else about a third of the population believes that every word of the Bible is literally true two-thirds expect the second coming half of them in their lifetime and on and on I don't think anything like this close to it anywhere in the world that goes far back actually goes to the colonists but it's always been there it's never really been mobilized as a political force now it is and for good reasons you got to get voters somehow there's also a nativist tradition people are afraid that you know they're coming after us and it's amazing to watch so Rand Paul is the young libertarian hero in the Senate right now he's organizing a campaign to try to get people to block the small arms treaty at the United Nations that's a important treaty small arms of massacring people all over the world and almost 80% come from the United States but his rationale is as the arms control treaty is a plot by the United Nations and the Socialists radical of Obama and Clinton to try to take Oh air arms so that when the UN comes to attack us we won't be able to defend ourselves you can't find this anywhere in the world you know nothing remotely like it but these sectors are there they've been around it's old traditions they're now being mobilized because there's no other way to get votes and that's why you get what you've just seen in the Republican primers I'm in near lunacy you know that people in the rest of the world are looking at this and can't believe what's happening in the country well what's happening is quite understandable when one of the two political parties abandons any pretense of being a parliamentary party just serves the super-rich you know lockstep uniformity there's no other way for them to survive they've got to mobilize these sectors to get votes that's what's happening it's commonly said that moderate Republicans have disappeared which is not quite true they are now centrist Democrats and the Democratic Party is veered to the right as well seeking the same corporate dollars not quite as fast well there's a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute that's the major source of regular reliable information on and analysis of the economy the recent studies called failure by design it reviews the data is simple it's worth reading it's very simple presentation of a lot of data it reviews the data on the impact of the are called the neoliberal policies of the past generation which includes astonishing concentration of wealth while wages incomes have stagnated or declined working hours have increased the far beyond Europe the weak benefit system eroded this incidentally in the richest and most powerful country in history with extraordinary advantages the authors of the study point out that the failure they refer to is class-based so the designers they have achieved spectacular success and they also stress that it is designed that is there have been alternative policies they were always possible they still are but it will take the kind of activism that brought about the New Deal progressive step in the 60s back to much earlier days in order to do something about this I mean progress doesn't come as a gift from above the post Golden Age economy the one reviewed by this pamphlet it's actually enacting a nightmare that was envisaged by the classical economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo both of them recognized they're talking about England of course they recognize that if British merchants and manufacturers invested abroad and relied on imports they would profit but England would suffer both of them hope that these consequences would be averted by what's called in the literature home bias that is a preference to do business in the home country and see the home country grow and develop therefore as if by an invisible hand England would be saved from the ravages of global markets actually that's the one occurrence of the famous phrase in visit and in Smith's classic Wealth of Nations in it's pretty hard to miss it's the only occurrence and it's basically in an argument against neoliberal globalization David Ricardo successor hoped that thanks to home bias I'm quoting him now most men of property would be satisfied with the low rate of profits in their own country rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations feelings that I would that I would be sorry to see weakened same point essentially actually that one was brought to light I didn't know it before in an important book on globalization that was produced here by the political economy Research Institute in the past 30 years Adam Smith's masters of mankind have abandoned the sentimental concerns for the welfare of their own society concentrating instead on short-term gain huge bonuses the country be damned as long as the powerful nanny state remains intact to serve their interests the developing picture is very aptly described in a brochure for investors that was produced by Citigroup it's a huge investment bank and so on that's once again feeding at the public trough it's been doing that regularly for thirty years in a cycle of risky loans huge profits crash bailout by the public the bank's analysts this is a brochure for investors they describe a world that's dividing into two blocks at one of which they call the plutonomy then there's the rest the vast majority now they're sometimes called the global precariat those who are living a precarious existence who whether or not there enough to get employment in the United States they are subject to growing worker insecurity that if you didn't know is the basis for a healthy economy Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan explained that to Congress while he was loading his performance in economic management I think that's the real shift in global society and not to China and India but to the global plutonomy and the Citigroup boundless understand it they invite advise investors to focus on the very rich where the action is they have something called a plutonomy stock basket which is investments on things that the rich one and they point out that it's far outperformed the world index of developed markets since 1985 that's when the reagan-thatcher economic programs of enriching the very rich and punishing the rest we're taking off and by shredding the remnants of political democracy at the Masters also lay the basis for carrying the lethal process forward and will continue to do so as long as their victims are willing to suffer in silence which is always a choice and never an assessee

Channel: ExplodedView MEF

Views: 392,802

Rating: 4.8063722 out of 5

Keywords: Exploded-View, Media Education Foundation, MEF, Noam Chomsky, UMass, University of Massachusetts, hegemony, Colonialism, Media, Election, Israel, Iran, Mid-East, Poverty, Regressive taxation, Political influence, Corporate influence, Economy, Banks, Regulation, New Deal, Middle East (Broadcast Genre), US, Markets, Doomsday Cycle, profit, Bail out, Plutocracy

Id: _9CHtm2qK2g

Length: 62min 55sec (3775 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 02 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/jeradj]

I wish I could make about 10 hours worth of Noam Chomsky required yearly watching for all people.

Does anyone know of other speakers who can engage on such a wide range of topics and bring them all back together in a similar manner?