|
Today's
Stories
September 18, 2007
Mike Whitney
U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel
Alan Farago
Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It?
John Ross
America's Great Wall:
Where Will the Workers Go
When They Finish It?
Ron Jacobs
Nooses Hung From Jena, La. to College Park, Md.
Alex Doherty
Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement": Who's Responsible?
September 17, 2007
Marjorie Cohn
Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom
Paul Craig Roberts
Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be
Ricardo Alarcón
The Return of C. Wright Mills Amid the Dawn of a New Era
Marc Levy
Fake Vets Chasing Fame
Eva Liddell
In 1969 We Already Knew What 2007 Would Look Like
Website of the Day
Propaganda: Your Job in Germany. Directed by Frank Capra, and written by Theodor Geisel
Sept. 15-16, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
The General Came to Washington
Vicente Navarro
How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy
Mike Whitney
Plummeting Dollar, Credit Crunch
Herman Mindshaftgap
Has There Ever Been a Surge? If so, Has it a Future?
Ellen Cantarow
Girls! Music! Palestine!
Jordan Flaherty
K-Ville: Fox's New Paean to the N.O.P.D.
Zachary Hurwitz
Julio Cusurichi on Amazonian Development
September
14, 2007
Debbie Nathan
New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator"
Franklin Lamb
Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later
Patrick Cockburn
Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha
Farzana Versey
The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon
Alan Farago
This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption
Hank Edson
Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache
September
13, 2007
Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official
Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot
The Barksdale Nukes
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last
Michael Baney
Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past
Dr. Susan Block
Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern?
September
12, 2007
Paul Craig Roberts
American Economy: RIP
Stan Goff
The Petraeus Report
William Blum
When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It.
Manuel Garcia
Forgetting 9/11
Debbie Nathan
Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time
September
11, 2007
Patrick Cockburn
The Fakery of General Petraeus
Iain Boal
Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse
Michael Dickinson
Osama on 9/11
Guerry Hoddersen
Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken
Bill Hatch
Irish Politics in Old Time California
Gary Leupp
The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti
Website of the Day
Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th"
September
10, 2007
Uri Avnery
A Big Victory Against the Wall
Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus's Closet
Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen
Screwing Up In Iraq
David Michael Green
Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee
Pius Adesanmi
A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick
Betty Schneider
How to Deal With Sex Offenders
September
8 / 9, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Will the US Really Bomb Iran?
Saul
Landau
The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire
Ismael
Hossein-Zadeh
Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars
Ray
McGovern
Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq
Matthew
Abraham
Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul
Alan
Farago
The Governor and the Growth Machine
Christopher
Brauchli
Grand Old Party Animals
Rannie
Amiri
Battle of the Camps
Fred
Gardner
Will Snoops Get Stopped?
James
L. Secor
B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale
Missy
Comley Beattie
Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now?
Ben
Tripp
Still in the Clover
Francis
Boyle
The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show
Joe
Allen and Paul D'Amato
Jason Bourne vs. James Bond
Website
of the Weekend
Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above
September 7, 2007
Robert
Fantina
Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality
John
Ross
Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain
James
Brooks
The Occupation Within
Russell
Mokhiber
Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability
Joshua
Frank
The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy
John
Walsh
On the Green Party
Mark
Brenner
New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices
Mike
Ferner
"I Will Salute No More Forever"
Website
of the Day
Help Save Osny Zachary's Life
September
6, 2007
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden
Hand
Allan
J. Lichtman
When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ...
Norman
Solomon
The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman
Yifat
Susskind
Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the
Miskito Coast
Catherine
Fenton
Why I Am Going to the Protest
Laura
Santina
Can the War Machine be Contained?
Farzana
Versey
Fission Kashmir
Yves
Engler
Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of
Industry to Pay
Kelly
Overton
Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist?
Michael
Simmons
One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky
Crumb
Website
of the Day
Dams and Genocide in Guatemala
September
5, 2007
Stan
Goff
The End Begins
Michael
Dickinson
Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer
Matthew
Abraham
Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students:
a Defining Moment
Patrick
Cockburn
The Basra Debacle
Dave
Lindorff
Beware the Wounded Beast
Paul
Craig Roberts
Who Are the Fanatics?
Clifton
Ross
Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity
Elizabeth
Schulte
Katrina's Forgotten Refugees
Joseph
Grosso
Labor Day in New York City
Ben
Terrall
Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco
Website
of the Day
A Guide to Narco Dollars
September
4, 2007
Jean
Bricmont
Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking
Iran
Patrick
Cockburn
Cut and Run in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime
Tom
Kerr
Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row
Gary
Leupp
The Case of Jose Maria Sison
Sonja
Karkar
The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine
Heather
Gray
The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal
Silence of Billy Graham
Fidel
Castro
The Super-Revolutionaries
Jackie
Corr
Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand
Sunsara
Taylor
Katrina and the Progress of the System
Website
of the Day
Colombia Journal
September
3, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
Brits Flee from Basra
Eamon
McCann
Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes
Joshua
Frank
The End of the Green Party?
Chris
Floyd
Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph
Marjorie
Cohn
A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans
Walter
Brasch
The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in
Iraq
Matt
Reichel
Redefining the American Dream
Website
of the Day
Don't Get Fooled Again
September
1 / 2, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Entrapment Snares Larry Craig
Andy
Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo
Saul
Landau
The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five
David
Keen
An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror
Patrick
Cockburn
The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care
Services
Diana
Johnstone
Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket
George
Longstreth, MD
& Karen Longstreth, RN
The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank
Linda
M. Woolf
A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights
Ralph
Nader
Wrapping the World with Advertising
Fred
Gardner
The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD
Ben
Tripp
Enquiry in America Today
David
Michael Green
American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut
Missy
Comley Beattie
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't
Learned About Tolerance
Michael
Dickinson
Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana
Paul
Krassner
Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark
Ron
Jacobs
A Sports Nation of Millions
Poets'
Basement
Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z
August
31, 2007
Jeff
Gibbs
Why I Am Not Going to the Protest
Paul
Craig Roberts
The War Criminal in the Living Room
Ray
McGovern
Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran?
Robert
Weissman
The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing
Matt
Vidal
Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages
Robin
Mittenthal
The Biofuels Trap
Chris
Kutalik
Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis
Richard
Forno
Watching Freedom's Watch
Binoy
Kampmark
Dianified
Dave
Zirin
Kenneth Foster Lives
Website
of the Day
Free
the Jena 6
August
30, 2007
Gary
Leupp
Larry Craig on the Seat
John
Ross
Dead Forest Defenders
Anthony
DiMaggio
Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the
Gibran Academy
Jordan
Flaherty
Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans
Michael
Donnelly
The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir)
Russell
Mokhiber
Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is
for Fighting
Dennis
Brutus
and Patrick Bond
Global Financial Apartheid
William
S. Lind
The Truth Tellers
Martha
Rosenberg
They Call Him Dr. Cruel
Jeff
Leys / Brian Terrell
Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project
Website
of the Day
Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song"
August 29, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage
to Kerbala
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The Costs of the Afghanistan War
David
Rosen
The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from
the Republican Closet
Dave
Zirin
Confronting Katrina
Paul
Craig Roberts
More Shame, More Sorrow
Diane
Farsetta
Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel
Ben
Davis
Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One
Alan
Farago
The Housing Crisis and the Environment
Jenna
Orkin
Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero
Don
Monkerud
The Vanishing American Vacation
Richard
Nasser
Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR
Website
of the Day
Don't Sleep on the Struggle
August
28, 2007
Uri
Avnery
The Language of Force
Bill
Quigley
Katrina, Two Years Later
Joshua
Frank
The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains
China
Hand
"I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy
Firmin
DeBrabander
Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore
Charles
Peña
Nuclear Fear Factor
Andy
Worthington
Good Riddance, Gonzales
Ramzy
Baroud
Abbas and the Abyss
Anthony
Papa
Roger Stone's New Patsy
Ashley
Smith
Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport
Website
of the Day
B is for Bomb
August 27, 2007
Jorge
Mariscal
The General Reports
Bill
Christison
Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars
Manuel
Garcia, Jr.
911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black
Hole
Anthony
DiMaggio
Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press
Bruce
A. Roth
India and the New Nuclear Era
John
Walsh
Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2
Dave
Lindorff
Gonzo's Gone
Ron
Jacobs
Taking It to the Streets
Binoy
Kampmark
Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty
Russell
D. Hoffman
My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry
Website
of the Day
George W. Told the Nation
|
September 18, 2007
Interviewing Alan Greenspan: How 60 Minutes Blew It
By ALAN FARAGO
It is really a sad commentary on the TV medium that given the chance to ask some hard questions of Alan Greenspan, it has no idea what to ask. In last night's 60 Minutes interview with Alan Greenspan, Lesley Stahl looked like a deer caught in the headlights. This was a big interview and she biffed it.We were supposed to be impressed by Mr. Greenspan's fascination with numbers and statistics, like the protein content of wheat. Hooey. He's an economist.
If there was any revelation, it was in Mr. Greenspan's vanity. (The view that Stahl elicited from Greenspan, that "everyone is a social climber", was bizarre.)But the worst was Stahl's inability to counter Greenspan's assertion that he failed to anticipate problems from the subprime mortgage fiasco, that is sending shock waves through world credit markets.As she fumbled in her notes, Stahl was missing the hard questions.
Why does the mainstream media persist in focusing on the retail end of the mortgage industry? Sure, there was plenty of fraud and corruption and plain unethical lending. But that's not even close to the main concern, for a Federal Reserve chief.The retail end of the mortgage industry--that Congress is also focusing on--is a red herring.The world economy is not reeling from too many adjustable rate mortgages, or, lending to poor Americans. Come on!The world economy is reeling because Wall Street took the ordinary mortgage industry and turned it into riverboat gambling, using ordinary mortgage loans and multiplying the underlying debt 10X, 20X, 100X, then selling the debt to investors without friction of regulation, protected by a phalanx of bankers, road pavers, cement manufacturers, and political contributors.
As Federal Reserve chair, with a fascination for arcane numbers, Alan Greenspan surely knew three things: 1) that the outsized role of securitization on Wall Street was ballooning due to lack of regulations or reporting standards, 2) that the world of financial derivatives, dreamt up by Salomon bond trader Louis Ranieri in the 1980's, had rained billions of dollars in commissions on Wall Street while injecting unheard of risk into world financial markets, and 3) that currying the favor of Wall Street involved active disassociation between the first two points.
But Stahl and 60 Minutes simply repeated the rote business of 15 second sound bites on nightly news: the foreclosures, the for sale signs, the layoffs.The question for Greenspan is simple: what did you know, and when did you know it, about financial derivatives related to the mortgage industry? Who did you talk to, Mr. Greenspan, in the building and construction industries who played to your vanity and genius by ratcheting down the federal funds rate to the lowest levels in US financial history?
Why didn't you ask for better information, Mr. Greenspan, or regulation?
It simply doesn't wash that Greenspan wasn't paying attention. On weekends he and his wife Andrea Mitchell were hobnobbing on Miami Beach with celebrities and the swell crowd, the geek version of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald off Lincoln Road. What didn't Mr. Greenspan see? All the indicators of wealth driven by a financial bubble were in plain view. (see eyeonmiami.blogspot.com, archive feature "housing crash".)
Stahl and 60 Minutes blew it.
Alan Farago of Coral Gables, who writes about the environment and the politics of South Florida, can be reached at alanfarago@yahoo.com
|
New From
CounterPunch Books
The Secret
Language
of the Crossroads:
HOW THE IRISH
INVENTED SLANG
By Daniel Cassidy
Click Here to Buy!
Cassidy
on Tour
Click Here for Dates & Venues
"The Case Against
Israel"
Michael
Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz
Click Here to Buy!
Saul Landau's
Bush and Botox World
with a Foreword by Gore Vidal
Click Here to Order!
Grand Theft Pentagon
How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism
The Occupation
by Patrick Cockburn
Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont
CITY BEAUTIFUL
By Tennessee Reed
Bruce Springsteen On Tour
By Dave Marsh
The Book on 9/11 the White House Denounced
as "ABSOLUTE GARBAGE"
|
