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Kall: And confidence to promote them.
Klein: Yeah, the confidence to promote them, especially in a crisis when they’re needed the most, right, on the verge of recession, really believe in that green infrastructure, you know, green collar economy that Van Jones is talking about. And use this moment to make it happen. Believe that you spend your way out of a recession. And believe that the global climate crisis is a bigger crisis than what’s going on on Wall Street. And that we cannot allow Wall Street’s crisis to cancel out our ability and take away our tools to meet the most pressing crisis of our time, which is global warming.
Kall: Uh-huh.
Klein: We need to stay focused. And, you know, I believe that that sort of confidence in this moment opens up tremendous possibilities. You know, if you can bail out AIG, an insurance company, which has now received more than a hundred billion dollars, right? That could get healthcare to every child in the country. And it’s time to seize this moment. Because, if we don’t seize this moment to make those types of arguments about what’s possible, right, and understand the stakes of actually negotiating a good deal with these banks, right? I mean, I think the banks should be allowed to go bankrupt and they should be taken over by the state on the most favorable terms possible.
And then they become the revenue generation stream rather than a sap on public resources that prevent us from meeting the climate crisis, for meeting healthcare crisis, and all of the other challenges before us. So this can be flipped into an opportunity, but only if there is tremendous confidence in our ideas. I don’t think it’s about not having the ideas, I really think the Left panics in a crisis, okay? And we regress and we start projecting far more competence and goodwill onto the people in the Bush Administration than they deserve. I don’t think that Henry Paulson has gotten nearly a rough enough ride. And we’re seeing this now from Barney Frank. He’s looking at these contracts and giving his seal of approval to the conflicts of interest. It’s outrageous.
Kall: Barney Frank represents all the bankers and all the investors in Connecticut. He’s doing his job. They’re his constituents, unfortunately for the rest of us.
Klein: Well, for the few weeks until the election, politicians can’t afford to ignore their other constituents. You know, and it gets harder after an election. And another point that I want to make to Obama supporters out there, which is: You know, he is saying some really important things out there on the campaign trail about this really being a referendum on an ideology, the ideology of deregulation and trickle-down economics, and that’s exactly the right message. What worries me is that he’s taking top-level economic advice from Bob Rubin and Larry Summers, both of whom are responsible, along with Alan Greenspan and Phil Gramm, for the disaster that we are living through right now. And I say that, you know, directly responsible. These are the people who refused to regulate derivatives, who fought off all attempts and sage advice saying that they should do so. There was a fantastic piece in the New York Times recently reexamining Alan Greenspan’s legacy. I’m sure you saw it, right? But what was really remarkable about that piece is that the two other people that really share the responsibility were Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. And what we know about Robert Rubin is that when he was at Goldman Sachs and after Bill Clinton won the election in 1992, he started having meetings with Clinton. This is after the election, but before inauguration. And, in that key period, he convinced Clinton that he should abandon many of his promises from the campaign trail and embrace economic austerity. Okay? We need to get Rubin away from Obama. He should be as much of a political liability…
Kall: Who is…?
Klein: …as Reverend Wright. Because he is one of the people who created this disaster.
Kall: Who should Obama be listening to? Who are the good guys?
Klein: Who are the good guys? Well, Joseph Stiglitz is a good guy. And he is listening to Joseph Stiglitz. But, you know what? What we need to understand, right, is that he’s going to be picking his Treasury Secretary, he’s going to be picking his Trade Representative, he’s going to be deciding who’s going to replace Neel Kashkari and we need to make sure that it isn’t Rubin’s protégé, Jason Furman, who Obama appointed as an Economic Advisor, who is a believer in Rubinomics, and thinks Wal-Mart is great for poor people. It should be people like Stiglitz, it should be people like Paul Krugman, Dean Baker, Gerard Bernstein, and, you know, if he really believes that this is about abandoning these policies of deregulation, he needs to get away from Bob Rubin and Larry Summers.
Kall: How bad would things be, I mean…
Klein: I think one of the things people should say at this point to Obama, is that the next Treasury Secretary shouldn’t come from Wall Street.
Kall: Amen. I need to do a quick station ID. This is the Rob Kall Bottom Up Show WNJC1360 and I’m talking to Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and, by my reckoning, one of the smartest people in the World. And I’m loving this conversation! Now, what can we do to get rid of Rubin and his ilk from the Obama Administration before it starts?
Klein: Well, we tell Obama that we agree with what he’s saying, but that we understand the game he’s playing. Okay? When he says this is the end of the ethos of trickle-down economics and deregulation and then he has his picture taken next to Bob Rubin and Larry Summers and Paul Voelker. You know what he’s doing? He’s winking at Wall Street. And he’s saying, “Don’t’ listen to what I’m saying to get elected, there’s going to be economic continuity, as the economists call it. And, you know, this is the game. Right?
Kall: This is why a lot of our readers don’t trust Obama and they’re not going to vote for him, actually, at OpEdNews.
