OpEdNews - Page 8 of Article: "Looting of America" Author Sees Opportunity in Meltdown

What's missing now which makes me a little, which makes me worry, is not what the Obama administration is doing because they are trying to do something. What worries me is that there is no articulate voice outside the administration that is calling for dramatic change. There is a line from the Roosevelt administration where, it goes something like: some progressive labor people came in and made all these demands . . .

DS: A. Philip Randolph.

LL: Was it A. Philip Randolph?

DS: Yes.

LL: And Roosevelt told him, "OK. Go out there and make me do it."

DS: Yeah.

LL: Well, that's what has to happen. If there is no pressure coming, there's some coming from the Congress, but there's no, what's missing now, for example, is a labor movement that has an articulated alternative vision that had popular support that could say, "Look. These are the things that have to happen now." Everyone is kind of relying on Obama to do it for them, and I don't think that's possible unless the spectrum of debate changes.

What I fear most happening now is a certain kind of financial amnesia is going to set in. We're going to forget how we got here, and we're going to look at the problems at GM, and the right is going to come in and start blaming Fanny and Freddie, and they're going to blame big government, and it's going to get to be a muddle. And that's what happens when you don't have, you know, popular organizations. In fact, there's really no left, at least that I can see, that is laying out an alternative platform.

Actually, one of my critiques of the left is, at least large swaths of it, just ignored the financial sector. You know, it was all about bosses and workers in the real economy and kind of finance, finance was kind of like another sector off to the side.

But anyway, something needs to, some kind of popular, for us not to, you know, go through all these things again and again we're going to have to see an alternative vision get put forth on the popular level so that there's pressure on Obama not to cave into, you know, what . . .

DS: ... people who paid for his campaign want. The, I want to let you go, but there are a couple of quick questions on this point. There's a sort of an ad hoc, grassroots coalition put together called A New Way Forward with a web site http://www.anewwayforward.org In their list of proposals, you know, is sort of general themes and there's good overlap with your proposals, and if I'm correctly informed you're going to be speaking at one of the events. They are organizing events everywhere on June 10. Is this a good tool to try to enlarge and move forward.

LL: Sure. I'm for anybody trying to, you know, if they can pull it off and attract people to it, that would be fantastic. Becomes a great place for a dialogue, a great place to develop a deeper, broader understanding of how we got here so we don't forget, and how we, you know, where we want to go in the future. Yeah, that's a nice formation.

I kind of wish that the larger institutions - environment, labor and others – saw the need to also participate more fully in this kind of thing, but you know, it's relatively early, so let's see how it unfolds. I wish them all the best. I'm going to do what I can to support them.

DS: I think you're absolutely right, and my hope, of course, is that people will go to these teach-ins and organize more of them on June 10 and then reach out to labor unions they are part of and other groups they are part of and create a bigger movement. And there is at http://www.anewwayforward.org a nice little video that people can show at these teach-ins that goes into some of these issues, but I would strongly recommend that between now and June 10th people get copies of The Looting of America by Les Leopold and then discuss it at these teach-ins on June 10.

Let me just ask you about two pieces of legislation before I let you go because I do know of a couple of bills that seem at least tangentially to address what we're talking about here. We haven't talked a lot about the Federal Reserve, but, you know, more of, you know, the biggest chunk of this money that has been handed out in these bailouts has gone through the Federal Reserve, and yet Congress isn't allowed to see what's happening there, even though it is public money, and so there's a bill that, at this point has some Democratic support but more Republican support that's called the Federal Reserve Transparency Act. It has about 180 co-sponsors and, you know, you only need 218 to pass a bill. Is that a good . . .

LL: Look, transparency is obviously a good thing. You know, the American people can't be in the dark. It's kind of interesting that you're saying that, the Republicans obviously think this is a kind of a wedge issue that they can embarrass the Obama administration with. I support it but not, you know, for that reason.

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