Bill Moyers sits down with former Nixon White House strategist and political and economic critic Kevin Phillips, whose latest book BAD MONEY: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, And The Global Crisis Of American Capitalism explores the role that the crumbling financial sector played in the now-fragile American economy.
Recently, even people unaccustomed to paying mind to the world of finance suddenly began to learn a lot about terms like sub-prime mortgages, securitization, derivatives and, more ominously, negative equity, and the great unwind.
And now, when several blue-chip firms have failed in rapid succession, many Americans are getting another crash course in high finance as they try to understand the collapses, buy-outs, and government takeovers of respected household names like Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and American International Group (AIG).
This is the denouement (final outcome) of the 25-year debt buildup which was undertaken mostly by the financial sector putting themselves on steroids to– get bigger and bigger and bigger. And we’ve finally gotten to the point where the bubble isn’t sustainable anymore but a lot of Wall Street is dedicated to minimizing the spattering of the bubble, so to speak.
Phillips explains that these are the fruits of what he calls the “financialization” of the United States: the decline of manufacturing and the rise of finance as the central driver of the nation’s GDP.
So bit by bit, they got bigger. And the other reason they got bigger was because this became a country that was further and further in debt. Consumerism was just pushed to the nth degree. People were given the sense that they had to buy everything and they had to borrow to do it increasingly.
Kevin Phillips is a political analyst, historian and author of thirteen books. Mr. Phillips first gained prominence as the chief political strategist for Richard Nixon during the 1968 election. In 1969, he published THE EMERGING REPUBLICAN MAJORITY, which forecasted a major shift to the right in electoral politics – a prediction that has been remarkably accurate.
His books have covered the range of history, politics and economics. In 1990, THE POLITICS OF RICH AND POOR, a critique of Reagan-Bush economics; in 2004, AMERICAN DYNASTY: ARISTOCRACY, FORTUNE, AND THE POLITICS OF DECEIT IN THE HOUSE OF BUSH. And in 2006, AMERICAN THEOCRACY explored the corrosive influence of oil, fundamentalist religion and debt on American democracy.
I highly recommend this book and interview to everyone. I found them very informative.
Hope you find it interesting:
