None of the candidates has the answer to US economic woes,
says alexander cockburn |
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America's tragedy is that we have three neo-liberals left in the presidential race at a time when, as Martin Wolf correctly pointed out in Wednesday's Financial Times, neo-liberalism has collapsed. The bail-out by the Fed of Bear Stearns sounded the death knell for 30 years of deregulation.
How have McCain, Clinton and Obama adjusted to the new facts of life, at a moment when the entire system is still tottering?
The Republican, John McCain, has confirmed his own low estimates of his grasp of economic policy by announcing that he is opposed to any strengthening of financial regulation to prevent the shenanigans that caused the sub-prime and 'securitisation' catastrophes which provoked the current credit crisis. At a moment when the costs of federal bail-out and decline in economic indicators are certain to require a big increase |
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| Hillary Clinton wants Alan Greenspan to address the credit crunch, despite his having engineered it |
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in the US government deficit, he wants to cut spending.
Hillary Clinton shuttles between criticisms of McCain's stance and her formal declaration in one recent speech that she wants Clinton-era Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, and former Fed chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker to lead a "high-level emergency working group" to recommend ways to restructure at-risk mortgages to help avert more foreclosures.
Her nomination of Rubin and Greenspan scarcely encourages confidence in Mrs C's oft-proclaimed capacity to hit the ground running in times of crisis. Rubin was the arch deregulator in Bill Clinton's second term. It was Rubin who successfully pushed for repeal in 1999 of the Glass Steagall Act which, amid the onrush of the Great Depression and financial collapse in early 1933 (when Roosevelt closed down the banking system altogether), placed regulatory barriers between commercial and investment banking.
As Fed chairman in the Clinton and early Bush years, Greenspan deliberately  |
A great day for John McCain
