US late evening comment television can be very good indeed. I am known to watch it on occasion, albeit on catch up. Choose your channels correctly and you get a fairly left of centre (at least for the US, and for most in the UK) view.
Jon Stewart was a stalwart of it for years. Now he does more selective interviewing but the technique is the same. Excellent research, no nonsense and hard questioning. Here he rightly eviscerates Larry Summers on the need for central bank inspired austerity:
If only we have interviewers willing to stand their ground in that way, based on the facts.
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This is the other America we don’t see often enough and is often pushed into the back ground or given other things to hate or get mad about.
Summers is pathetic isn’t he – he keeps telling John that he and John are the same – appealing to his ‘economic kinship’ as if it benefits him and should not question it or trying to make him feel compromised by his apparent wealth.
Again the idea of ‘excess demand’ is raised as if we’ve never had it so good but now it’s payback time – except if you are rich or a corporation. This pops up in Clara Mattei’s book too. It’s all the workers fault – nevermind the advertising and marketing they get bombarded with.
And then you have austerity – produce more, consume less through lower wages and debt – yes, even a miss few meals and keep the heating off.
Thanks for sharing.
If the 2008 crash had any single root cause it was the hubris of Summers who assured Clinton that deregulation of derivatives was fine because sophisticated mathematics like the Black Scholes equation would ensure there would be no catastrophically bad risks.
He should still be in sack cloth and ashes.
Stewart was good – listening to Summers was like listening to a speak your weight machine or one of the popular A.I.s – stilted stuff one has heard time & again – and he was not really answering the questions – a Stewart noted – inflation was not due to wages rises – Summers has no response – instead he deployed cognitive dissonance – because it went against his eco-religious belief system. “Corporations not greedy” what a pathetic man.
Brilliant – a clear case of corporate greed denial, Summers was certainly on the ropes and cant cope with criticism of the Feds policy of letting Apple, Exxon and co and their CEOs making unlimited profits and salaries while ordinary workers arre struggling to pay for rent and gas……………..
Summers’ face said it all.
What nailed it for me was the question: if corporations can raise their prices in capitalism, why can’t workers do the same (for their labour)? Attacking workers for doing what wealthy corporate owners do is class warfare. If owners don’t want wage demands, they shouldn’t put up prices.
Look up his appearance on cnn crossfire with tucker Carlson. It will be on YouTube I think. Brutal. Just horrible.
Richard
Did you watch tonight’s Panorama? If not, its worth a watch – see summary below.
Ros Atkinson was the presenter and programme includes interview with Mohammed A El-Erian, Resolution Foundation, Senior Research Economists at IFS.
It’s such a shame that you or Danny Blanchflower were not consulted or interviewed. How can you guys get more face time and coverage?
Millions of people in the UK feel like they’ve had a pay cut, with wages often not keeping up with the cost of living. As public sector workers continue to take strike action, the BBC’s Analysis Editor Ros Atkins asks why so many people are feeling so poor. He returns to Cornwall, where he grew up, to meet families struggling to make ends meet in what has become one of the country’s most deprived areas. The government says the pandemic and the war in Ukraine are the key drivers of the cost-of-living crisis, but Ros discovers problems stretching much further back and asks whether we are getting the full story about the extent of the challenges facing the UK economy.
I will get it on catch up