Two years recession, or ten years of hell?

F William Engdahl: US economy has been hollowed out over the last 15 years and debt load is staggering

Two years recession, or ten years of hell? Part 1
In this first segment of the interview, Paul Jay discusses how the global economic crisis will impact Europe with author and political economist William Engdahl. Engdahl says Italy is experiencing the worst economic crisis it has seen in 30 years, and the British economy is “falling off a cliff.” He says the European situation is “differentiated,” that “it’s a little bit different from what’s going on in North America, especially in the United States.” In Europe, he explains, “it is more an indirect knock-on effect of the United States financial meltdown.” He says the question now is whether the European Union is going to try and decouple its dependency on the US dollar and begin to form regional currency blocks like many nations around the world are starting to do.

Two years recession, or ten years of hell? Pt.2
To understand the significance of this moment to the U.S. and European economy, Paul Jay continues this discussion with F. William Engdahl, political economist and author. Putting the conversation in context, Engdahl explains that, “the deindustrialization of America in the 1970s and 1980s was replaced by the growth of Wall Street and the major banks.” He continues in England, the entire industrial economy, with the exception of a few tiny pockets of the defense industry, has really become “a hollowed out wreck. It’s really a service economy now.” As far as the emerging demand by protesters in Europe for the nationalization of banks, Engdahl says, “it’s a very real possibility.”

Bio
F William Engdahl is an economist and author and the writer of the best selling book "A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order." Mr Engdhahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock in the early 1970s. Mr. Engdahl contributes regularly to a number of publications including Asia Times Online, Asia, Inc, Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine; Freitag and ZeitFragen newspapers in Germany and Switzerland respectively. He is based in Germany.