William Greider on Our Times

Check out William Greider on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now.

AMY GOODMAN: How did this happen, the economic crisis?

WILLIAM GREIDER: I think it was like a series of big waves coming at this country for really twenty-plus years, some of which I wrote about rather forlornly—forlornly, trying to say, to know what’s happening to us.

And those waves were ignored and, in many cases, launched by what I call the governing elites, the people in power, not just government, but finance, business, Republicans and Democrats alike. And either out of blindness or a kind of craven unwillingness to deal with reality, those waves have crashed over us. And I’m talking about trade. I’m talking about the militarism that drives our spending and our adventures overseas, the weakness—the weakening condition of the US economy. And on top of that is a financial system that is wildly inflated in value, in power and in all those things.

And here we are. I mean, all of that is now either crashing or subsiding. And you know, from my book, my belief is, and I feel it strongly, is that we’re just at the beginning of a really long, hard passage in which Americans, like it or not, have to adjust to these new realities. And I’m an American-born optimist. I think that can actually be good, not just for the world at large, but for our country, in the long run, if we face reality. And if we keep denying reality, it will get harder and harder.