Jeffrey D. Sachs and Common Sense of Economics

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Just today I heard him speak on CNN Live. You’ve got to admire this guy, I do. You can watch his commentary here.

The Global Economy’s Corporate Crime Wave

NEW YORK – The world is drowning in corporate fraud, and the problems are probably greatest in rich countries – those with supposedly “good governance.” Poor-country governments probably accept more bribes and commit more offenses, but it is rich countries that host the global companies that carry out the largest offenses. Money talks, and it is corrupting politics and markets all over the world.

Hardly a day passes without a new story of malfeasance. Every Wall Street firm has paid significant fines during the past decade for phony accounting, insider trading, securities fraud, Ponzi schemes, or outright embezzlement by CEOs. A massive insider-trading ring is currently on trial in New York, and has implicated some leading financial-industry figures. And it follows a series of fines paid by America’s biggest investment banks to settle charges of various securities violations.

There is, however, scant accountability. Two years after the biggest financial crisis in history, which was fueled by unscrupulous behavior by the biggest banks on Wall Street, not a single financial leader has faced jail.

Occupy Wall Street Shows People Want Democracy, Not Corporatocracy: Jeffrey Sachs

The Price of Civilization by Jeffrey Sachs – review The Guardian

A Natiom of Vidiots

Television and related media have been the greatest purveyors and conveyors of corporate and political propaganda in society.

America’s TV ownership is almost entirely in private hands, and owners make much of their money through relentless advertising. Effective advertising campaigns, appealing to unconscious urges – typically related to food, sex, and status – create cravings for products and purchases that have little real value for consumers or society.

The same, of course, has happened to politics. American politicians are now brand names, packaged like breakfast cereal. Anybody – and any idea – can be sold with a bright ribbon and a catchy jingle.

All roads to power in America lead through TV, and all access to TV depends on big money. This simple logic has put American politics in the hands of the rich as never before.

Even war can be rolled out as a new product. The Bush administration promoted the premises of the Iraq war – Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction -in the familiar colorful, fast-paced, and graphics-heavy style of television advertising. Then the war itself began with the so-called “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad – a made-for-TV live spectacle aimed at ensuring high ratings for the US-led invasion.

Many neuroscientists believe that the mental-health effects of TV viewing might run even deeper than addiction, consumerism, loss of social trust, and political propaganda. Perhaps TV is rewiring heavy viewers’ brains and impairing their cognitive capacities. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently warned that TV viewing by young children is dangerous for their brain development, and called on parents to keep children under two away from the TV and similar media.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
He is also Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals.

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

6 Comments

Don Durito on November 16, 2011 at 2:26 pm

He is an interesting figure. Although for a long time associated with neoliberal capitalism, he never really was one to adhere to orthodox Friedmanism. Still his association with “Shock Therapy” or austerity in many parts of the world and the aftermath of suffering for so many as a consequence has tainted his legacy. I’ve often wondered if his more recent endeavors have been a means of paying penance for those days. He’s still a true believer in capitalism, no doubt, but I do see him as something of a transitional figure between the current neoliberal phase of capitalism and its next phase. I could be wrong, of course.

Oui on November 16, 2011 at 4:21 pm
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Generous social-welfare states in Europe

An excerpt from an article in The New Republic, Jonathan Cohn’s piece – Neoliberal utopia awaits: Great Danes

In a recent Scientific American column focusing on the performance of these Nordic countries, Columbia University economist and best-selling author Jeffrey Sachs blasted the right’s anti-tax, antigovernment conventional wisdom, concluding that “a generous social-welfare state is not a road to serfdom but rather to high levels of satisfaction, fairness, economic equality and international competitiveness.”

Nor is Sachs the only prominent economist who has taken notice of Scandinavia’s success. So have Harvard’s Richard Freeman and Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, the former chief economist for the World Bank. Even some relatively conservative economists–like the American Enterprise Institute’s Kevin Hassett, who has been an adviser to John McCain–will concede that the Nordic model works, although they are dubious that the United States could copy it: “The Scandinavians,” Hassett says, “show that you don’t have to have a terrible economy if you have a big welfare state and high taxes.”

Even the more conservative of Clinton’s economic adviser are interested:

For most of the 1990s, the Clinton administration pursued a relatively conservative set of economic policies that focused on efforts to improve overall growth, such as free trade and balanced budgets. Most economists believe Clinton’s economic policies did, in fact, strengthen the economy as a whole. But it’s also becoming apparent that the poor and middle class didn’t benefit from the subsequent period of growth as much as the administration had hoped–and that both groups remain surprisingly vulnerable to economic dislocation today.

Of course, even back in the early ’90s, not every member of the Clinton administration was so sanguine about the policies it was pursuing at the time. Among those dissenting was then-Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who proposed that “if we blended our flexible labor markets with [Europe’s] investments in human capital and put the safety net somewhere in between ours and theirs, you would have the best system in the world.” Reich’s argument famously lost out to those of Clinton’s more conservative advisers–among them former National Economic Council Chairman Laura Tyson and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.

The Social Welfare State, beyond Ideology
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
ask on November 16, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Still his association with “Shock Therapy” or austerity in many parts of the world and the aftermath of suffering for so many as a consequence has tainted his legacy.

Fully agree. Naomi Klein gives him a solid blasting in the Shock Doctrine.
- Don Durito on November 16, 2011 at 8:53 pm
  
  I strongly recommend “The Shock Doctrine” – it is a must read for anyone wanting to understand our current predicament.

Superpole on November 19, 2011 at 9:11 pm

If- per Mussolini- corporatism is the ultimate example of fascism, then it stands to reason television, almost wholly corporate owned, is the ultimate propaganda tool and has been used very effectively for the last 40-50 years.

I’ve been trying to make this clear over at the orange site- and getting mostly, until recently, the dull bovine stare as a result.

“Don’t complain about the media, become the media!”
Jello Biafra

So now we have to undo four decades of corporate propaganda, in a very short time. a daunting task indeed. Even more daunting, we have to undo decades of political propaganda, namely the “democratic” party, as it is now, is significantly better than the republican party.

Clearly they are not.

Don Durito on November 19, 2011 at 9:32 pm

The Democratic Party has been a neoliberal party for at least a couple decades now. You know it. I know it. Some others here get it as well. Unfortunately, you’re likely to get that blank bovine stare from the rest of the lot. Neoliberal capitalism is packaged and marketed to us via the Democratic Brand as “Hope and Change”, but so far the only change I see is more impoverishment (with the exception of the 1% who have done quite well), and the only hope I hold is that the whole sorry two-party system crumbles soon. In the meantime, I keep expecting ridiculous arguments attempting to persuade me that those who are trying to hurt me and my comrades are my only hope to a better life (e.g., the supercommittee, the catfood commission, etc., just “have to succeed” we are told, because the alternative is “far worse”). Fortunately I don’t watch any news, so I miss the bulk of the propaganda. The headlines I scan occasionally are toxic enough as it is.

Don Durito on November 16, 2011 at 2:26 pm

He is an interesting figure. Although for a long time associated with neoliberal capitalism, he never really was one to adhere to orthodox Friedmanism. Still his association with “Shock Therapy” or austerity in many parts of the world and the aftermath of suffering for so many as a consequence has tainted his legacy. I’ve often wondered if his more recent endeavors have been a means of paying penance for those days. He’s still a true believer in capitalism, no doubt, but I do see him as something of a transitional figure between the current neoliberal phase of capitalism and its next phase. I could be wrong, of course.
- Oui on November 16, 2011 at 4:21 pm
  .
  
  Generous social-welfare states in Europe
  
  An excerpt from an article in The New Republic, Jonathan Cohn’s piece – Neoliberal utopia awaits: Great Danes
  
  In a recent Scientific American column focusing on the performance of these Nordic countries, Columbia University economist and best-selling author Jeffrey Sachs blasted the right’s anti-tax, antigovernment conventional wisdom, concluding that “a generous social-welfare state is not a road to serfdom but rather to high levels of satisfaction, fairness, economic equality and international competitiveness.”
  
  Nor is Sachs the only prominent economist who has taken notice of Scandinavia’s success. So have Harvard’s Richard Freeman and Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, the former chief economist for the World Bank. Even some relatively conservative economists–like the American Enterprise Institute’s Kevin Hassett, who has been an adviser to John McCain–will concede that the Nordic model works, although they are dubious that the United States could copy it: “The Scandinavians,” Hassett says, “show that you don’t have to have a terrible economy if you have a big welfare state and high taxes.”
  
  Even the more conservative of Clinton’s economic adviser are interested:
  
  For most of the 1990s, the Clinton administration pursued a relatively conservative set of economic policies that focused on efforts to improve overall growth, such as free trade and balanced budgets. Most economists believe Clinton’s economic policies did, in fact, strengthen the economy as a whole. But it’s also becoming apparent that the poor and middle class didn’t benefit from the subsequent period of growth as much as the administration had hoped–and that both groups remain surprisingly vulnerable to economic dislocation today.
  
  Of course, even back in the early ’90s, not every member of the Clinton administration was so sanguine about the policies it was pursuing at the time. Among those dissenting was then-Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who proposed that “if we blended our flexible labor markets with [Europe’s] investments in human capital and put the safety net somewhere in between ours and theirs, you would have the best system in the world.” Reich’s argument famously lost out to those of Clinton’s more conservative advisers–among them former National Economic Council Chairman Laura Tyson and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
  
  The Social Welfare State, beyond Ideology
  
  "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
- ask on November 16, 2011 at 6:00 pm
  
  Still his association with “Shock Therapy” or austerity in many parts of the world and the aftermath of suffering for so many as a consequence has tainted his legacy.
  
  Fully agree. Naomi Klein gives him a solid blasting in the Shock Doctrine.
  - Don Durito on November 16, 2011 at 8:53 pm
    
    I strongly recommend “The Shock Doctrine” – it is a must read for anyone wanting to understand our current predicament.
Superpole on November 19, 2011 at 9:11 pm

If- per Mussolini- corporatism is the ultimate example of fascism, then it stands to reason television, almost wholly corporate owned, is the ultimate propaganda tool and has been used very effectively for the last 40-50 years.

I’ve been trying to make this clear over at the orange site- and getting mostly, until recently, the dull bovine stare as a result.

“Don’t complain about the media, become the media!”
Jello Biafra

So now we have to undo four decades of corporate propaganda, in a very short time. a daunting task indeed. Even more daunting, we have to undo decades of political propaganda, namely the “democratic” party, as it is now, is significantly better than the republican party.

Clearly they are not.
- Don Durito on November 19, 2011 at 9:32 pm
  
  The Democratic Party has been a neoliberal party for at least a couple decades now. You know it. I know it. Some others here get it as well. Unfortunately, you’re likely to get that blank bovine stare from the rest of the lot. Neoliberal capitalism is packaged and marketed to us via the Democratic Brand as “Hope and Change”, but so far the only change I see is more impoverishment (with the exception of the 1% who have done quite well), and the only hope I hold is that the whole sorry two-party system crumbles soon. In the meantime, I keep expecting ridiculous arguments attempting to persuade me that those who are trying to hurt me and my comrades are my only hope to a better life (e.g., the supercommittee, the catfood commission, etc., just “have to succeed” we are told, because the alternative is “far worse”). Fortunately I don’t watch any news, so I miss the bulk of the propaganda. The headlines I scan occasionally are toxic enough as it is.

Jeffrey D. Sachs and Common Sense of Economics

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