Tag: Robert Scheer

Laura Flanders of GRITtv talks once again with Truthdig.com’s Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, author of “The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street“, about Barack Obama’s economic policies and team, about the blackmailing of you and the country and the world by Wall Street, about the financial industry lately booking two thirds of all profits produced by all economic activity in the United States, and about the parasitical mindset that now passes for “success” among the ultra-wealthy and their political servants in a morally warped empire in decline…or in freefall?

“Wall Street was blackmailing us,” says Robert Scheer of the bank bailouts, “And we got nothing in return.” It’s not news to any viewers of GRITtv that Wall Street’s tentacles ran throughout our election, but now that the election is over, we turn again to the running of government. Scheer joined us in the studio recently to discuss his new book, The Great American Stickup, and we asked him to give us some thoughts for after the election as well. Most pressing of all, he asks if either bankers or politicians are capable of thinking in anyone’s long-term interests.

This past Wednesday “Barack Obama was a guest on The Daily Show, thereby becoming the first sitting president to appear as Jon Stewart’s guest. (In July, Obama became the first sitting president ever to appear on The View.) In the half-hour-long interview, Stewart quizzed his grizzled guest about health-care reform, the financial crisis, and the midterm elections.”

“Stewart’s most combative query concerned National Economic Council director Larry Summers-in particular, Obama’s hiring thereof. ‘We can’t expect different results with the same people,’ Stewart said, referring to Summers’s previous stint as treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. He continued, ‘Larry Summers … that seems like the exact same person.’ Obama, inadvertently quoting his imminently quotable predecessor, replied, ‘Larry Summers did a heckuva job.’ Stewart, somewhat shocked, advised him, ‘You don’t wanna use that phrase…'”

This morning at GRITtv Laura Flanders talked with journalist and Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, who reminds that “Summers was the chief architect of Clinton-era policies that created the economic crisis in the first place, and that Obama’s appointment of him to get us out of it was never going to result in anything but more money being thrown at Wall Street.”

It’s no wonder that there is now so much irrepressible enthusiasm among the liberals and independents and progressives who tipped the balance in the democrats favor in 2006 and in 2008 to get out and vote for democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.