Your weekly excerpt from one of my books. This week: "The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America and How to Restore Its Greatness"
Thank you for this info- it’s becoming really clear why people say “both parties are the same”- one party needs to promote explicit clarity that they are doing a 180 on this -right now- yesterday even better.
Thanks for this history. Funny, not funny, that the last actual liberal/progressive Democrat in the US was Lyndon Johnson. Democrats' only connection to the middle class is that they are not quite as rotten as Republicans.
Damn, I had a fairly skeptical view of Clinton before. Now, I am thinking he isn't so smart or principled and that he really screwed things up and fell for the ludicrous crap dished up by the wealthy and powerful. Well, at least I can still believe in Hillary, his wife, can't I?
Making her a nominee was a mistake because wingnuts had made an image of her that appealed to every nasty misogynist stereotype in U.S. culture. They made her look like Lady Macbeth in a pantsuit, so much did they revile her.
The right-wing machine went after both Clintons in a way that was vicious and bizarre. In her case, it is proof of just how strong and effective she was. But the mistake was in not defending her better and in not attacking back with enough vigor and outrage. The way we get ineffective leaders like Schumer is by choosing people who won't offend the crazies and the fat cats. We should have raised hell and poked them in the eye with a stick a long time ago.
I'm glad you have identified the Clinton presidency as the time when the Democratic Party turned from a party of the people to an instrument of the elite for the upward transfer of wealth that continues to this day
While I see the rank and file members of that party, especially the progressives, as the only hope for America (and Canada), many wrongly believe the leadership is still pro-middle/working class. The imprisoning concept seems to be Clinton's, 'Centrism', as if it's a middle-of-the-road position. It is slightly liberal on some social issues but Reagan-level right-wing on economic ones. That is why the working classes have rejected the Democratic Party and sought a maverick savior who was different than the traditional politicians.
On another point, however, FDR, through Pecora, understood that banks do not hold deposit money in trust. The main cause of the Great Depression was that banks were permitted to speculate in the stock market, putting that deposit money at risk to creditors when they lost their investment, as they did. So, section 16 of Glass-Steagall effectively prohibited newly separated commercial banks from using deposit funds to speculate in the markets.
The 1999 Clinton amendments allowed the banks to merge again, but that was not the cause of the 2008 financial crisis. That act did not touch section 16 of Glass-Steagall.
In 2008, once again, the commercial banks had speculated with depositor money, this time in the derivative market, betting with the hedge funds using the naked credit default swap. They were able to do this because the Office of the Controller of Currency had issued interpretations over the years that effectively gutted section 16 to the point of total ineffectiveness, completely out of the public eye.
Canadian banks did not fail or need a bailout because Canada does not allow the type of credit default swamp that was used in bringing down the banks in 2008— and continues to be legal in the US. There is really no need for that 800-page Dodd-Frank. That, too, is window dressing devised by the neoliberals. All that is needed is a one-page regulation prohibiting the naked credit default swap.
It is why the so called reforms, like the safe harbor rules, the Financial Services Modernization Act, permitting stock options for execs and stock buybacks should be dumped. I am not so stupid as to think catastrophe won’t come, as with Trump, it’s guaranteed.
I'm glad you mentioned the safe harbour rules. In Curbing Stock Buybacks: A Crucial Step to Raising Worker Pay and Reducing Inequality, Tung and Milani confirmed that companies spent nearly 60 percent of net profits on buybacks alone from 2015 to 2017. They estimate that with the money allocated to buybacks, companies such as Lowe’s, CVS, and Home Depot could give each of their workers a raise of at least $18,000 a year. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/curbing-stock-buybacks-crucial-step-raising-worker-pay-reduce-inequality/
That could be done for workers from buyback amounts alone, without reducing outsized executive pay or dividends, nor raising product prices, nor returning one job from China or Mexico, nor deporting one immigrant.
That should be the focus. 'Affordability' is another distraction from executive greed.
Yes, but that is not enough. The executives will simply grab that money for themselves, either in higher pay or dividends. Remember, they take most of their pay in stock. So any solution has to include a method for the savings from canceling buybacks to reach workers, so they get a fair share of the productivity their labor creates again.
Did anyone ever investigate Milton Friedman et al for being active agents of something, somebody other than the United States? Or was he already in the big money pockets while advocating the drastic measures he and his group proposed for the USA and Russia? To what end? Or were they just on drugs - the drug of money? How did everybody else fall for it?
I religiously read your posts every day. Sadly, you are so much preaching to the choir and the people who should be listening are solely interested in their own personal well-being. Great writing by you and Neomi Klien and others have been warning us about how neoliberalism will ultimately gut our democracy. It finally has. The Democrats were supposed to be the opposition party, and they stopped being that in the 70s when they embraced the idea that corporate capitalism had to be fully supported. Clinton, Obama, Biden are all corporate capitalist disciples and so much of the Democratic party has been bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporate money to fund their elections. They as much as Republicans fight to keep their jobs and money has become the driving factor. We killed our strong labor unions, and it was as much Democrats as Republicans. The neoliberal establishment needs to be thrown out
Biden might argue that he wanted to bring the working class under an umbrella of equality with big capitalists shielding them from the power of wealth. He did march with pickers in Michigan.
Something seems to happen to people as they reach a certain income level. Many become so enamored with their own wealth and their obviously “miraculous” ability to make it, that they completely lose track of any semblance of real decency and start regarding themselves as above everyone else.
I picture Putin like a turkey vulture picking at the near carcass of Russia. I wonder if that’s the picture our billionaires think of for the future of US middle class?
I can support Thom's presentation on the lost opportunity for supporting a more positive future for the various nations that comprised the Soviet Union.
I managed the cargo logistics for the Chicago Symphony's ground-breaking tour in 1990 of the Soviet Union. I was working for a large logistics services firm at the time and both planned and supervised, in person, the cargo operation on the ground and in the air.
What I witnessed -- both during the pre-tour preparations in Leningrad and Moscow in the summer of '90, and then the actual tour in the late autumn of that year -- was a society collapsing upon itself. There is no exaggeration in what I write now. If anything, I am holding back much of what I experienced.
Upon the arrival of the chartered 747 passenger jet that carried the musicians, management and some of the "sponsors", because the airport did not have a cargo terminal to handle such a large cargo profile, the aircraft had to be held on the Leningrad runway.
After the passengers were taken off the aircraft and bused to the terminal I and the working crew had to load the 20 plus tons of instruments, wardrobe, etc. with which a major orchestra travels from the aircraft's cargo hold directly onto waiting trucks.
The thing most etched in my memory was seeing about one hundred of the largest aircraft on earth, the Soviet Army's ANTONOV-124, strewn all over the miles of runway. This cargo craft was designed to deliver a complete armored company's tanks and etc. into battle. So that you could drive tanks right up the ramp and into the belly of the aircraft, the floors of each aircraft were laid end to end with titanium sheeting that popped like popcorn when you walked on it.
I was told that the aircraft were no longer maintained as operational, and that they were being stripped for the most valuable parts.
I encourage you to research the value of refined titanium.
The cannibals were already feasting.
On the same evening I had to send home almost half the crew of Russian labor that was assigned to the program because they were obviously drunk.
To get anything done properly up and down the chain of operations I had a roll of five dollar bills and a sack filled with cartons of Marlboro cigarettes to move things along.
Once or twice I had the distinct pleasure of berating KGB agents in my best NY'ese. They were moonlighting as security under contract with the program's promoters, but just took up space, looking surly.
Frankly, the whole operation was a circus with a hundred leaks, and running through an amazing amount of money.
However, once the tour moved to the major performance venue in Moscow, it became clear that money was not a concern.
The "real" sponsors showed up in limousines one evening after we got the equipment south from Leningrad to Moscow.
And then I understood. Among them was a very senior executive of Occidental Petroleum; a big player from McDonalds; bankers; and various corporate high rollers whom I mercifully have forgotten. Among this crowd was a Senator -- or perhaps former Senator -- whose run for the presidency had gotten side-tracked when he was found aboard a yacht with a young woman who was not his wife.
I came to understand that the tour was being funded as a vehicle for introductions and "understandings" at the highest level.
And outside this newly constructed palace of a hotel were a hundred or more young -- and some very, very young -- women. They stood and would ask the men as they walked to the entrance if someone would like to take them inside. With them were their "handlers".
It was here I first came to understand that the single most telling sign that a society is in collapse is when that society begins selling its women.
Throughout the Moscow portion of the tour there were mobs of kids selling Army fur caps, and every imaginable piece of equipment they thought might catch an American's fancy.
I am writing this not to shock, but to give clear vision of what such a society looks like.
Everything was for sale, all day and night.
The shops were COMPLETELY void of food on the shelves.
I mean nothing on any shelves, ever, while I was there.
Everything was cash and carry on the streets, behind buildings, in offices and restaurants. Army equipment, tools, caviar... US dollars and Euros were magic. No one wanted local currency.
I will leave it at that.
And if you think it cannot happen here, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
We tend to forget that Clinton was a hint of what was to come with Trump 2.0. Clinton's Day-1 reckless chainsaw action was to eliminate all first-line supervisors in order, as he asserted, to streamline and shrink the number of useless managers. Then he started neoliberalizing government policies.
Near the end of Clinton's first term, VP Gore asked me to survey the entire federal government to examine things like management, leadership, training, recruiting, communication, job satisfaction, and intent to quit. The only organizational change that was universally negative across the entire federal civilian workforce (DOD too) was eliminating all first-line supervisors - it triggered chaos that took a couple of years to work around. Imagine the challenge of repairing Trump's chainsaw DOGE damage when the time comes - if ever.
Is it possible that George Wallace was right all those decades ago when he said "There's not a dimes worth of difference between the/a Democrats and Republicans"?
The Nazi Republican Threat To Free And Fair Elections: How To Prevent It
On his Substack channel Thom Hartmann(https://bit.ly/4wf1ji1) who is NYT best selling author of 37 books in multiple languages reports on how the algorithms of TikTok influenced not only its own young viewers but also affected other platforms and their algorithms hence affecting the 2024 election outcome
There were multiple forces that were employed(https://bit.ly/4u3YHlw) by Cheeto and the Nazi Republicans to put them into office and this report is just one more force that affected the 2024 election Greg Palast recounts how Nazi Republicans used the Vigilante Challenge(bit.ly/41UelTx) to subvert the election as well and it’s why Cheeto has been pushing the SAVE Act which would have given Theil and Palantir the states’ registered voting data in order to disenfranchise legitimate American voters
Call your senators today through the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and tell them you want algorithmic transparency legislation and Section 230 reform. Make sure your voter registration is current at vote.org, check on your state-level legislators at openstates.org, and start telling everyone you know that science has now proven that the 2024 election wasn’t a free and fair contest of ideas
Also contact your state rep/state senator to introduce a trigger law and have it in place before the 2026 midterm election: if the federal government interferes with the election, the state will redirect federal taxes to an escrow account
Thank you Thom for all this info. I just got a much clearer and fuller picture of Clinton. The level of corruption in our government just seems to grow and become more apparent in both parties. I realize that I really am a democratic socialist in terms of my values and the policies I believe in. Those are the candidates I want to support. I so enjoyed this chapter and look forward to more. You're a great teacher.
Thanks again, Thom. This reads like an endorsement of every Democratic Socialist one can think of. They (we) are the path forward.
Thank you for this info- it’s becoming really clear why people say “both parties are the same”- one party needs to promote explicit clarity that they are doing a 180 on this -right now- yesterday even better.
Thanks for this history. Funny, not funny, that the last actual liberal/progressive Democrat in the US was Lyndon Johnson. Democrats' only connection to the middle class is that they are not quite as rotten as Republicans.
Damn, I had a fairly skeptical view of Clinton before. Now, I am thinking he isn't so smart or principled and that he really screwed things up and fell for the ludicrous crap dished up by the wealthy and powerful. Well, at least I can still believe in Hillary, his wife, can't I?
Making her a nominee was a mistake because wingnuts had made an image of her that appealed to every nasty misogynist stereotype in U.S. culture. They made her look like Lady Macbeth in a pantsuit, so much did they revile her.
The right-wing machine went after both Clintons in a way that was vicious and bizarre. In her case, it is proof of just how strong and effective she was. But the mistake was in not defending her better and in not attacking back with enough vigor and outrage. The way we get ineffective leaders like Schumer is by choosing people who won't offend the crazies and the fat cats. We should have raised hell and poked them in the eye with a stick a long time ago.
I definitely agree!
I'm glad you have identified the Clinton presidency as the time when the Democratic Party turned from a party of the people to an instrument of the elite for the upward transfer of wealth that continues to this day
While I see the rank and file members of that party, especially the progressives, as the only hope for America (and Canada), many wrongly believe the leadership is still pro-middle/working class. The imprisoning concept seems to be Clinton's, 'Centrism', as if it's a middle-of-the-road position. It is slightly liberal on some social issues but Reagan-level right-wing on economic ones. That is why the working classes have rejected the Democratic Party and sought a maverick savior who was different than the traditional politicians.
On another point, however, FDR, through Pecora, understood that banks do not hold deposit money in trust. The main cause of the Great Depression was that banks were permitted to speculate in the stock market, putting that deposit money at risk to creditors when they lost their investment, as they did. So, section 16 of Glass-Steagall effectively prohibited newly separated commercial banks from using deposit funds to speculate in the markets.
The 1999 Clinton amendments allowed the banks to merge again, but that was not the cause of the 2008 financial crisis. That act did not touch section 16 of Glass-Steagall.
In 2008, once again, the commercial banks had speculated with depositor money, this time in the derivative market, betting with the hedge funds using the naked credit default swap. They were able to do this because the Office of the Controller of Currency had issued interpretations over the years that effectively gutted section 16 to the point of total ineffectiveness, completely out of the public eye.
Canadian banks did not fail or need a bailout because Canada does not allow the type of credit default swamp that was used in bringing down the banks in 2008— and continues to be legal in the US. There is really no need for that 800-page Dodd-Frank. That, too, is window dressing devised by the neoliberals. All that is needed is a one-page regulation prohibiting the naked credit default swap.
It is why the so called reforms, like the safe harbor rules, the Financial Services Modernization Act, permitting stock options for execs and stock buybacks should be dumped. I am not so stupid as to think catastrophe won’t come, as with Trump, it’s guaranteed.
I'm glad you mentioned the safe harbour rules. In Curbing Stock Buybacks: A Crucial Step to Raising Worker Pay and Reducing Inequality, Tung and Milani confirmed that companies spent nearly 60 percent of net profits on buybacks alone from 2015 to 2017. They estimate that with the money allocated to buybacks, companies such as Lowe’s, CVS, and Home Depot could give each of their workers a raise of at least $18,000 a year. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/curbing-stock-buybacks-crucial-step-raising-worker-pay-reduce-inequality/
That could be done for workers from buyback amounts alone, without reducing outsized executive pay or dividends, nor raising product prices, nor returning one job from China or Mexico, nor deporting one immigrant.
That should be the focus. 'Affordability' is another distraction from executive greed.
Robert Reich, in "Saving Capitalism," said that buy-backs need to be outlawed.
Yes, but that is not enough. The executives will simply grab that money for themselves, either in higher pay or dividends. Remember, they take most of their pay in stock. So any solution has to include a method for the savings from canceling buybacks to reach workers, so they get a fair share of the productivity their labor creates again.
Robert had several problems that needed fixing. You have hit another one, CEO compensation.
Did anyone ever investigate Milton Friedman et al for being active agents of something, somebody other than the United States? Or was he already in the big money pockets while advocating the drastic measures he and his group proposed for the USA and Russia? To what end? Or were they just on drugs - the drug of money? How did everybody else fall for it?
If the world goes down the toilet, where will they hide? Do they think they’ll make it to New Zealand and if they do, they’ll be let in?
As I understand it, bunker security systems for oligarchs is big business in the us now…
So much for yellow dogs. What is gained if you support the enemy that masks himself as one of you.
I religiously read your posts every day. Sadly, you are so much preaching to the choir and the people who should be listening are solely interested in their own personal well-being. Great writing by you and Neomi Klien and others have been warning us about how neoliberalism will ultimately gut our democracy. It finally has. The Democrats were supposed to be the opposition party, and they stopped being that in the 70s when they embraced the idea that corporate capitalism had to be fully supported. Clinton, Obama, Biden are all corporate capitalist disciples and so much of the Democratic party has been bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporate money to fund their elections. They as much as Republicans fight to keep their jobs and money has become the driving factor. We killed our strong labor unions, and it was as much Democrats as Republicans. The neoliberal establishment needs to be thrown out
Biden might argue that he wanted to bring the working class under an umbrella of equality with big capitalists shielding them from the power of wealth. He did march with pickers in Michigan.
Something seems to happen to people as they reach a certain income level. Many become so enamored with their own wealth and their obviously “miraculous” ability to make it, that they completely lose track of any semblance of real decency and start regarding themselves as above everyone else.
I picture Putin like a turkey vulture picking at the near carcass of Russia. I wonder if that’s the picture our billionaires think of for the future of US middle class?
I can support Thom's presentation on the lost opportunity for supporting a more positive future for the various nations that comprised the Soviet Union.
I managed the cargo logistics for the Chicago Symphony's ground-breaking tour in 1990 of the Soviet Union. I was working for a large logistics services firm at the time and both planned and supervised, in person, the cargo operation on the ground and in the air.
What I witnessed -- both during the pre-tour preparations in Leningrad and Moscow in the summer of '90, and then the actual tour in the late autumn of that year -- was a society collapsing upon itself. There is no exaggeration in what I write now. If anything, I am holding back much of what I experienced.
Upon the arrival of the chartered 747 passenger jet that carried the musicians, management and some of the "sponsors", because the airport did not have a cargo terminal to handle such a large cargo profile, the aircraft had to be held on the Leningrad runway.
After the passengers were taken off the aircraft and bused to the terminal I and the working crew had to load the 20 plus tons of instruments, wardrobe, etc. with which a major orchestra travels from the aircraft's cargo hold directly onto waiting trucks.
The thing most etched in my memory was seeing about one hundred of the largest aircraft on earth, the Soviet Army's ANTONOV-124, strewn all over the miles of runway. This cargo craft was designed to deliver a complete armored company's tanks and etc. into battle. So that you could drive tanks right up the ramp and into the belly of the aircraft, the floors of each aircraft were laid end to end with titanium sheeting that popped like popcorn when you walked on it.
I was told that the aircraft were no longer maintained as operational, and that they were being stripped for the most valuable parts.
I encourage you to research the value of refined titanium.
The cannibals were already feasting.
On the same evening I had to send home almost half the crew of Russian labor that was assigned to the program because they were obviously drunk.
To get anything done properly up and down the chain of operations I had a roll of five dollar bills and a sack filled with cartons of Marlboro cigarettes to move things along.
Once or twice I had the distinct pleasure of berating KGB agents in my best NY'ese. They were moonlighting as security under contract with the program's promoters, but just took up space, looking surly.
Frankly, the whole operation was a circus with a hundred leaks, and running through an amazing amount of money.
However, once the tour moved to the major performance venue in Moscow, it became clear that money was not a concern.
The "real" sponsors showed up in limousines one evening after we got the equipment south from Leningrad to Moscow.
And then I understood. Among them was a very senior executive of Occidental Petroleum; a big player from McDonalds; bankers; and various corporate high rollers whom I mercifully have forgotten. Among this crowd was a Senator -- or perhaps former Senator -- whose run for the presidency had gotten side-tracked when he was found aboard a yacht with a young woman who was not his wife.
I came to understand that the tour was being funded as a vehicle for introductions and "understandings" at the highest level.
And outside this newly constructed palace of a hotel were a hundred or more young -- and some very, very young -- women. They stood and would ask the men as they walked to the entrance if someone would like to take them inside. With them were their "handlers".
It was here I first came to understand that the single most telling sign that a society is in collapse is when that society begins selling its women.
Throughout the Moscow portion of the tour there were mobs of kids selling Army fur caps, and every imaginable piece of equipment they thought might catch an American's fancy.
I am writing this not to shock, but to give clear vision of what such a society looks like.
Everything was for sale, all day and night.
The shops were COMPLETELY void of food on the shelves.
I mean nothing on any shelves, ever, while I was there.
Everything was cash and carry on the streets, behind buildings, in offices and restaurants. Army equipment, tools, caviar... US dollars and Euros were magic. No one wanted local currency.
I will leave it at that.
And if you think it cannot happen here, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
We tend to forget that Clinton was a hint of what was to come with Trump 2.0. Clinton's Day-1 reckless chainsaw action was to eliminate all first-line supervisors in order, as he asserted, to streamline and shrink the number of useless managers. Then he started neoliberalizing government policies.
Near the end of Clinton's first term, VP Gore asked me to survey the entire federal government to examine things like management, leadership, training, recruiting, communication, job satisfaction, and intent to quit. The only organizational change that was universally negative across the entire federal civilian workforce (DOD too) was eliminating all first-line supervisors - it triggered chaos that took a couple of years to work around. Imagine the challenge of repairing Trump's chainsaw DOGE damage when the time comes - if ever.
To continue -
Is it possible that George Wallace was right all those decades ago when he said "There's not a dimes worth of difference between the/a Democrats and Republicans"?
The Nazi Republican Threat To Free And Fair Elections: How To Prevent It
On his Substack channel Thom Hartmann(https://bit.ly/4wf1ji1) who is NYT best selling author of 37 books in multiple languages reports on how the algorithms of TikTok influenced not only its own young viewers but also affected other platforms and their algorithms hence affecting the 2024 election outcome
There were multiple forces that were employed(https://bit.ly/4u3YHlw) by Cheeto and the Nazi Republicans to put them into office and this report is just one more force that affected the 2024 election Greg Palast recounts how Nazi Republicans used the Vigilante Challenge(bit.ly/41UelTx) to subvert the election as well and it’s why Cheeto has been pushing the SAVE Act which would have given Theil and Palantir the states’ registered voting data in order to disenfranchise legitimate American voters
Call your senators today through the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and tell them you want algorithmic transparency legislation and Section 230 reform. Make sure your voter registration is current at vote.org, check on your state-level legislators at openstates.org, and start telling everyone you know that science has now proven that the 2024 election wasn’t a free and fair contest of ideas
Also contact your state rep/state senator to introduce a trigger law and have it in place before the 2026 midterm election: if the federal government interferes with the election, the state will redirect federal taxes to an escrow account
Thank you Thom for all this info. I just got a much clearer and fuller picture of Clinton. The level of corruption in our government just seems to grow and become more apparent in both parties. I realize that I really am a democratic socialist in terms of my values and the policies I believe in. Those are the candidates I want to support. I so enjoyed this chapter and look forward to more. You're a great teacher.