Book recommendation & MUST see video: "Inside Job" Director Charles Ferguson: Wall Street Has Turned the U.S. into a "Predatory Nation"

DemocracyNow 5/29/2012

 

"Inside Job" Director Charles Ferguson: Wall Street Has Turned the U.S. into a "Predatory Nation" Two years after directing the Academy Award-winning documentary, “Inside Job,” filmmaker Charles Ferguson returns with a new book, “Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America.” Ferguson explores why no top financial executives have been jailed for their role in the nation’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We also discuss Larry Summers and the revolving door between academia and Wall Street, as well as the key role Democrats have played in deregulating the financial industry. According to Ferguson, a "predatory elite" has "taken over significant portions of economic policy and the political system and also, unfortunately, major portions of the economics discipline." [Transcript to come. Check back soon.] "You're better off being born poor in Asia than in the United States" partial transcript: "There's a great deal of now publicly available information from depositions and lawsuits, subpoenas, etc that make it extremely clear that there is overwhelming evidence of massive criminal behavior - and there has not been a single criminal prosecution. ... "[A predator elite] has certainly taken  over significant portions of economic policy and  the political system, and also unfortunately major  portions of the economics discipline. [Since deregulation under Reagan] we've seen steady and  dramatic growth in the use of money to influence  politics and also academia. "The Cost of Running for President now,  and also the cost of running for the Senate  or the House, has gone up by a factor of 20  since the late 1970s. This is now many  billions of dollars every election cycle, and when you combine that with other similar trends over  the last 30 years - the growing divergence between  public sector and government salaries, the growing use of revolving door hiring, the growth  of the lobbying sector, all of which have exploded over the same period - you get to a situation in  which the public sector and the public interest are  outspent by very specific, private interests - especially in the financial sector - by literally  probably 50 or 100 to 1. ... AG: How do you take the country back? "A lot of hard work. At this point it's going to have to come from below, from  the American people. ... It's not going to  come from the highest levels of the policy  system, and it's not going to come from the  highest levels of electoral politics; because  to a great extent they have been captured  and neutralized by the financial sector and  other narrow financially powerful interests groups. Predator Nation: "Charles H. Ferguson, who electrified the world with his Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job, now explains how a predator elite took over the country, step by step, and he exposes the networks of academic, financial, and political influence, in all recent administrations, that prepared the predators’ path to conquest. Over the last several decades, the United States has undergone one of the most radical social and economic transformations in its history. · Finance has become America’s dominant industry, while manufacturing, even for high technology industries, has nearly disappeared. · The financial sector has become increasingly criminalized, with the widespread fraud that caused the housing bubble going completely unpunished. · Federal tax collections as a share of GDP are at their lowest level in sixty years, with the wealthy and highly profitable corporations enjoying the greatest tax reductions. · Most shockingly, the United States, so long the beacon of opportunity for the ambitious poor, has become one of the world’s most unequal and unfair societies. If you’re smart and a hard worker, but your parents aren’t rich, you’re now better off being born in Munich, Germany or in Singapore than in Cleveland, Ohio or New York. This radical shift did not happen by accident. Ferguson shows how, since the Reagan administration in the 1980s, both major political parties have become captives of the moneyed elite. It was the Clinton administration that dismantled the regulatory controls that protected the average citizen from avaricious financiers. It was the Bush team that destroyed the federal revenue base with its grotesquely skewed tax cuts for the rich. And it is the Obama White House that has allowed financial criminals to continue to operate unchecked, even after supposed “reforms” installed after the collapse of 2008. Predator Nation reveals how once-revered figures like Alan Greenspan and Larry Summers became mere courtiers to the elite. Based on many newly released court filings, it details the extent of the crimes—there is no other word—committed in the frenzied chase for wealth that caused the financial crisis. And, finally, it lays out a plan of action for how we might take back our country and the American dream."