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[PEN-L:9507] Robert Reich's imaginary conversation with Alan Greenspan

Louis Proyect
Tue, 15 Apr 1997 11:42:09 -0700 (PDT)

There's an interesting but self-serving article by Robert Reich in the
latest New Yorker. It would appear to be an excerpt from a soon to be
published book about his misadventures in the Clinton administration.

He describes his dinner with Alan Greenspan to the readers of this degraded
neo-liberal magazine. After letting us know that he shared lentil soup and
lambchops with Greenspan, Reich offers up an imaginary question and answer
session with the federal reserve chair since he confesses that "I never
asked the questions I intended to ask and never got the answers I imagined
he'd give." The reason that these questions never got asked is that
contemporary liberalism has lost its nerve. And what better place to
demonstrate this failure nerve than in the besotted, perfume-ad laden pages
of the New Yorker magazine, a symbol of the collapse of liberalism.

Q: Mr. Chairman, how did a shy little Jewish guy like you get to be the most
powerful man in America?
A: I'm cunning and ambitious and very, very smart.

Q: You're a Republican and a follower of Ayn Rand?
A: And proud of it. Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush all appointed me to
powerful positions.

Q: What's your purpose in life?
A: To stamp out inflation.

Q: Even if that means high unemployment?
A: You bet.

Q: Even if it requires slow growth and stagnant wages?
A: Right you are.

Q: Even if it means drastic cuts in federal programs that help average
working people and the poor?
A: Absolutely, if that's what it takes to balance the budget and remove all
temptation to inflate the government's debt.

Q: But why? A little inflation never hurt anybody.
A: You're wrong. It hurts bond traders and lenders.

Q: But why place their interests over everybody else's interests in good jobs?
A: Because I'm a capitalist and capitalism is driven by the filthy rich.
They make their money off of bonds. Your constituents are just plain filthy.
They have to work for a living.

Q: You're the nation's central banker. You should be accountable to all
Americans.
A: But I'm not, and neither is the Fed.

Q: That's not fair, it's not right.
A: Nyah-na-na-nyah-na. You can't stop me.

Q: Can too.
A: Can not.

Q: Can too. The President's my friend.
A: So what?

Q: So he won't appoint you when your second term expires.
A: Oh no?

Q: No.
A: Well, we'll see about that.

Q: You think he'll reappoint you?
A: No doubt about that.

Q: Why are you so sure?
A: Because he needs me.

Q: Oh yeah?
A: Yeah.

Q: What does he need you for?
A: He needs me because he needs the confidence of Wall Street, and only I
can deliver that to him.

Q: Oh yeah?
A: Yeah. That's why Bush reappointed me in 1992, even though he hated me for
keeping interest rates high as the economy slipped into recession in 1990. I
could do it to your man, too. I could do worse. He'll reappoint me. He'll do
whatever I want him to.

Q: Well, you can take your crummy lunch and cram it, you robber-baron pimp.
A: Go suck on a pickle, you Bolshevik dwarf.


Louis Proyect





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