Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
Stocks, Bitcoin and Crypto Markets Breaking Bad on Donald Trump Pump - 21st Nov 24
Gold Price To Re-Test $2,700 - 21st Nov 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks: This Is My Strong Warning To You - 21st Nov 24
Financial Crisis 2025 - This is Going to Shock People! - 21st Nov 24
Dubai Deluge - AI Tech Stocks Earnings Correction Opportunities - 18th Nov 24
Why President Trump Has NO Real Power - Deep State Military Industrial Complex - 8th Nov 24
Social Grant Increases and Serge Belamant Amid South Africa's New Political Landscape - 8th Nov 24
Is Forex Worth It? - 8th Nov 24
Nvidia Numero Uno in Count Down to President Donald Pump Election Victory - 5th Nov 24
Trump or Harris - Who Wins US Presidential Election 2024 Forecast Prediction - 5th Nov 24
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24
At These Levels, Buying Silver Is Like Getting It At $5 In 2003 - 28th Oct 24
Nvidia Numero Uno Selling Shovels in the AI Gold Rush - 28th Oct 24
The Future of Online Casinos - 28th Oct 24
Panic in the Air As Stock Market Correction Delivers Deep Opps in AI Tech Stocks - 27th Oct 24
Stocks, Bitcoin, Crypto's Counting Down to President Donald Pump! - 27th Oct 24
UK Budget 2024 - What to do Before 30th Oct - Pensions and ISA's - 27th Oct 24
7 Days of Crypto Opportunities Starts NOW - 27th Oct 24
The Power Law in Venture Capital: How Visionary Investors Like Yuri Milner Have Shaped the Future - 27th Oct 24
This Points To Significantly Higher Silver Prices - 27th Oct 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

United States Debt and Exporting of the U.S. Economy Abroad Silent Conspiracies

Politics / US Politics Apr 29, 2009 - 08:53 AM GMT

By: Richard_C_Cook

Politics

I met Senator Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings (D-SC) in 1985 in the aftermath of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. I had testified before the Rogers Commission after I leaked documents to the New York Times about NASA’s past knowledge of flaws with the O-ring joints whose failure caused Challenger to blow up. Later I told commission investigators and the press it was political pressure from the Reagan White House that likely caused NASA to overrule the engineers who tried to stop the launch.


Senator Hollings, then senior Democratic member of the Republican-controlled Senate Commerce Committee, thought the same thing. He wanted the Senate to conduct its own investigation, but the Republicans blocked it.

One day Senator Hollings invited me to his office for a chat. He was both brilliant and humorous. Though he eventually backed off the issue, the work we did together led to a major article I wrote for the Washington Monthly entitled, “The Rogers Commission Failed.” My collaboration with the senator is described in detail in my book Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2007).

Senator Hollings retired from the Senate in 2006 after 38 years of service. He remained a Democrat and kept his seat after the rest of his region went with the Republicans in 1968 through Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy.” As a moderate he worked in the shadows of Democratic stalwarts like Walter Mondale or Ted Kennedy, and his run for the presidential nomination in 1992 went nowhere. But he was a reliable supporter of civil rights legislation and, with Strom Thurmond, the younger of a duo that became the longest-serving tandem from the same state in Senate history.

Today Fritz Hollings is 87 years old and going strong. As a senator, he opposed free trade as favoring corporate wealth over workers and families. While in the Senate he once said, in his customary tone of sarcasm, “We hear those in Congress running around and saying, ‘Free trade, free trade, I am for free trade,’ when they know free trade is like dry water. There is no such thing.” In his book Making Government Work (University of South Carolina Press, 2008), he wrote that it was protectionism that was instrumental in building modern America.

On April 28, 2009, Fritz published an article on the Economy in Crisis website that President Barack Obama and his economic team, along with every member of Congress, should be required to read. It is entitled, “Silent Conspiracies.” http://www.economyincrisis.org/articles/show/2785

The first conspiracy he discusses is the growth of debt. He writes, “President Reagan started a strategy of growth for the economy – cutting taxes, borrowing, spending, and growing the national debt instead of the economy.” After President Bill Clinton’s policy of fiscal restraint, George W. Bush came along. Fritz writes: “Under President George W. Bush, Democrats joined Republicans in a conspiracy of debt....”

Now we have the Bush-Obama bailouts. Fritz writes: “After six months of bail-outs and another trillion stimulation, there has been no ‘jump-start’ to the economy. In order to ‘jump-start’ the engine there must be an engine under the hood. To ‘jump-start’ the economy there must be an economy under the hood.”

So why isn’t there an economy? Simple: through free trade we exported it. Through this conspiracy, says Fritz: “We have offshored the economy, and no one mentions this problem. Investment, research, development, production, jobs are in flight to China, India and Mexico. Republicans and Democrats join in a ‘no-no’ to enforce our trade laws and compete in globalization. Globalization is nothing more than a trade war with production looking for a country cheaper to produce.”

Fritz doesn’t mince words. He knows how the political system works: “The President and Congress continue in their conspiracy of ‘free trade’ in order to get the campaign contributions from corporate America and the financial community.” eHe He writes that “these silent conspiracies must be exposed,” and he is doing it in a way that puts almost every other present or former politician in the U.S. to shame.

By Richard C. Cook
http:// www.richardccook.com

Copyright 2009 by Richard C. Cook

Richard C. Cook is a former U.S Treasury analyst who also worked in the Carter White House and for NASA and writes on public policy issues. His new book is We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform (Tendril Press 2009). His website is http://www.richardccook.com He is a member of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network and has been an adviser to Congressman Dennis Kucinich and the American Monetary Institute http://www.monetary.org

Richard C. Cook Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in