FRA’s Gordon T Long talks financial repression and the decline in democracy with Paul Craig Roberts. Paul is the chairman of the institute for political economy, he was also the former assistant secretary of the US treasury for economic policy in the Reagan administration.
“As far as I can tell not only has democracy departed the western world but also compassion empathy for others, morality integrity respect for truth justice fairness self-respect western civilization has become a hollow shell there is nothing left but greed and coercion and the threat of coercion”.
He believes this outcome is based on the behavior and statements of the government and the public’s acceptance of it. Part of the reason the public doesn’t care, is due to a lack of information as about 90% of the American media is owned by 6 large mega corporations that manipulate the news.
“The story that is told by the American media is Washington’s propaganda line and of course whatever the corporation’s propaganda line is and there is no challenge to either”.
On the republican debates, Paul questions the aggressive stands that most of the candidates seemed to have towards foreign policy. He states that this stand will simply create distrust among nuclear wielding powers.
“Every American president since John F Kennedy worked with the soviet leadership to diffuse the nuclear issue”.
He says that this shift in culture across the candidates is a combination of both campaign finance and a shift in culture.
“There’s no such thing as a free market in the United States, it requires many producers none of which can affect price…………….look at the banks, the banks are so concentrated that they are too big to fail. How do you have capitalism if a failed enterprise doesn’t close down instead it is bailed out by the people or by the Federal Reserve printing money to buy its worthless portfolio. This not capitalism, there’s no capitalism here, this is an oligarchy!”
“What has the government said that’s true? Think of anything, can you think of anything they’ve said that’s true? We know that the unemployment rate they’re reporting is false, inflation rate is false, and the gross domestic product is false. We know all of this, we know that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, he did not have Al Qaeda connections, that Assad of Syria did not use chemical weapons. We know Russia did not invade Ukraine but they say this over and over and over. I can’t think of one thing that the government or corporate world has said in 20 years that’s true”.
