Customer Reviews

Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Bill Greider has written a very good book, and a very needed book, about the dire situation our nation is facing. The timing of its appearance, given the curve of events, especially the public's outrage over the AIG bonuses, has made him smile, I'm sure, and seem just a bit prophetic, since he assigns a big role for growing citizen participation to build a new economy, and a "thicker" democracy. (For "the smile," see his Op-Ed in the Outlook section of the March 22, 2009 edition of the Washington Post: "Main Street is Fired Up. Does Obama Feel the Heat?" at [...]

It seems a lot of folks are calling for "Fireside Chats" these days, including NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who wants President Obama to level with the people over how tough the road ahead will be, but primarily to rally them behind the Secretary of the Treasury Geithner's Bailout II; others have called the President's recent appearance on the Jay Leno show a modern day "video" equivalent of the FDR original radio broadcasts, but this writer believes it is Bill Greider who has delivered a real Fireside Chat to the nation with his new book Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of our Country (Rodale).

To be a genuine Fireside Chat, whatever the format, success is a matter of both tone and content: a conversational, over-the-fence tone, and serious, society-shaking subject matter. Greider has done justice, and then some, to both aspects. His opening chapter, "Fair Warning," is nearly pitch perfect in putting the reader at ease that the matters which follow, grave as they are, will be understandable. And he's tough, but fair, on the nation's political leaders: "I have some hard things to say about our country. Beyond recession and financial crisis, we are in much deeper trouble than many people suppose or the authorities want to acknowledge...the political behavior I do not forgive is failing to give people fair warning...those who govern ought to tell people what's coming so they at least have a chance to get out of the way."

Yes, a chance "to get out of the way" would be nice for citizens, but they don't get off the hook so easily in this book, either. Ducking is not going to be enough. There won't be long vacations for anyone in our country, at least not for a while, given what is coming, and Greider wants to put citizens, and their morale, through a basic training course in political economy so they can become the "`third front' in the political power struggle, a counterforce to both government and the private interests, the two great poles of influence which have contested power in America for the past 100 years. During this great struggle, however, "Citizens became spectators, further alienated from participating in the decisions that govern their lives. To be heard in the halls of democracy, one has to hire a lobbyist. To influence the private decisions of corporations, one has to become a major shareholder. Many Americans, not surprisingly, have become passive and resigned to their powerlessness."

Now I am sure many leaders of public interest groups which try to engage citizens in achieving their organizations' goals would have some trouble with that statement. Greider is suggesting that we citizens need a little distance from both parties and from the intermediary institutions that try to bridge the gap between citizen and party. This is not being recommended as a permanent retreat from political engagement, however. Greider wants citizens to come up with their own new "formations." There are two political systems in the nation Greider tells us: the official one of the two parties and their intertwined interest groups which produce top-down agendas for the voters, and "The Other America," those who are not registered to either party, about a third of the voters, and whose voices are not being heard. He's hoping that they can eventually produce a modern day equivalent to the Populist movement of the 1890's, drawing their sustenance from the long flowing "Underground River" - the "deeper current in American life - the pulse of democratic promise." It's time to rethink the relationships and come back with new forms. Here's how he puts it:

I say this with sympathy, but many representative organizations operating in Washington, from organized labor to environmentalists, are caught in the middle and compromised by their proximity to power. Because they have a seat at the table with the insiders, major groups typically temper their agendas so they won't lose their access to powerful figures. As a practical matter, these representative groups censor out or edit the full-throated opinions and aspirations of their own rank and file. The people are, therefore, distanced from power by those they chose to speak for them.

POSTED: "CITIZENS KEEP OUT" (of Fed, Trade Policy)
Yet, if we think about it in the way Greider does, there is a lot of truth to those assertions. Do readers feel they can have any influence over the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, and its regional branches? Admittedly designed to be immune to congressional and presidential pressure, much less the "unwashed masses" of mere citizens, the Fed's policies have become terribly one-sided since the ascent of Alan Greenspan, according to Greider, and now there is very serious policy talk of giving the institution even greater power over economic matters. Bloomberg News, a business friendly, powerfully connected news service, has had its inquiries and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit shrugged off by the Fed; Bloomberg is just trying to find out where our tax money is going in the great Bailout. (Not until the thunderstorm of public anger over AIG bonuses led to a listing of its counterparties on March 15th did the Fed relent a bit - illustrating just what Greider is talking about for newly energized citizens' power...) And on another great issue of the past 30 years, globalization and trade, and the loss of American manufacturing jobs to cheap labor havens overseas, China especially, trade talks and trade agreements, perhaps more than any other great policy arena other than the conduct of the Fed, have been structured to keep citizens out - even the formal representatives of two very germane interests that should most certainly have a direct seat at the table: labor and the environment. We are all dependent on the state of, and nature of, our economy, and we are ostensibly the world's greatest democracy - so how come in two of its most important power arenas, we're effectively disenfranchised?

The Great Language Barrier
That's why, Greider tells us, he wrote this book in the way he did. In these two policy areas, think about the way the Washington establishment uses special, off-putting language to help keep citizens at bay. The Fed is famous for, among other things, "Fed speak," a combination of economic techno-talk and quasi-religious mysticism, one of the reasons Bill Greider's earlier book, in 1987 , was entitled Secrets of the Temple. In matters of globalization and "free-trade," we have been confronted with a long history of academic studies, very statistically oriented, demonstrating the "ironclad law" of comparative advantage working to everyone's benefit (its subsequent breakdown is presented in the Chapter called "Second Thoughts"), and a dogmatism against tariffs and trade barriers so intense, so "theological," that one of Greider's chapters on it is called "Blinded by Faith."

Greider has made a special effort to take on these very tough, but very important topics in an easy to understand writing style, and he has succeeded. (We'll look at what he says on them in greater detail below). In this task, he was consciously working to overcome the "language barrier" put up by the governing elite: "In plain and simple terms, I am a reporter - not an expert or puffed-up insider - and that is how I want to talk over Americans apprehensions about our future." The language barrier is both a symbol and a glaring example of something else: "...the great gulf between the authority of the governing experts and the rest of us..." a "crippling divide...far more damaging than the much-lamented partisan conflict between Democrats and Republicans." Greider believes that a lot could be done to effectively translate between the experts, the parties and the people - if the average citizen can master the home entertainment remote control (Greider has trouble, so do I) - then they ought to be able to understand economic policy, but "the governing classes often find it is more convenient not to be understood." It is however, "worse than that. The governing authorities, even many successful politicians, begin with a snide presumption that people are like children and can't handle the hard facts." Greider's right about this, and unfortunately, for the crucial matters at hand, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner fit the bill of that charge pretty well. Just try imagining Chairman Bernanke answering questions in a "citizens' forum" setting...and I've had my own two brief public arm-wrestling sessions with Larry Summers during "questions from the floor" time at two Washington think tank events, one at Brookings on the day Bear Stearns was going under...I felt like an impertinent student facing a teacher in a Charles Dickens novel...


How the Fed Turned Its Back on the People
Greider tells us that since the reign of Fed. Chairman Paul Volker, who brutally broke the back of inflation in the late 1970's and early 1980's, there has been a dramatic shift in the exercise of the supposedly balanced mandate the Fed is charged with carrying out: to fight inflation, and to pursue full employment. Especially so under the long tenure of Chairman Alan Greenspan. This shift coincides with the decline of liberalism in the mid-1970's and the rise of the Republican Right, especially since the Reagan years. Yet it has also turned the Democratic Party upside down: their blue collar base has been largely thrown overboard as the party assumed the role of "fiscal responsibility" during the Clinton-Rubin years, becoming nearly as obsessed with reducing the budget deficit as with being the tiger of free trade. Since Greider "wrote the book" on the Fed in 1987, he, perhaps more than anyone else today, is entitled to draw up the indictment, which, in keeping with his "Fireside Chat" style, is simple and direct:

The Federal Reserve's policy essentially tilted the normal economic balance hard in one direction, then held it there for a generation. It favored wealth over wage income, creditors over debtors, capital over labor, financial investors over producers. It was as though the tectonic plates beneath American democracy and commerce were forced into a new alignment that favored the few over the many.

Reforming the Fed
And at nearly every crossroads decision moment that has culminated in today's financial catastrophe, the Federal Reserve, under Greenspan and then in the early Bernanke years, has been an active or passive enabler: ignoring the clear evidence of mortgage writing abuses brought to it, declining to increase margin requirements for stocks, to decrease leverage for banks, and actively encouraging the growth of the behemoth institutions now in so much trouble as well as the shadow banking system, which has undermined its ability to effectively control interest rates. With this clearly documented track record, Greider reacts with outrage at the thought that the Fed will be given new powers as the "systemic risk regulator" and chief traffic cop for the "shadow banking system" of hedge funds, private equity firms and other exotic financial outgrowths of the riotous years. Not surprisingly, the cure he recommends is more sunshine, more democratic voices in the make-up of the regional Federal Reserve System, and greater political accountability. And, of course, the break-up of the banking giants and greater reliance on many regional banks. (Citizens should be reminded that there are thousands of good smaller banks that never bought into the worst of the "new financial architecture.") But isn't that counter-intuitive to Greider's distrust of the current two-party system? Perhaps, but what he means is that by putting the Federal Reserve under the President, in the executive branch, it is really equivalent to requiring the Feds' policies to stand for election every four years. And at the heart of the matter behind this reasoning, for a great change for the Federal Reserve, is that it must start thinking and acting on the distinction between Wall Street, what is good for the old boys "club," and what is good for the country as a whole. The distinctions between the two have been massively, and tragically, confused. (The tale of the Fed and the citizens is told in Chapter Five, "The Politics of `Hard Money.'")

Taking on the High Church of Free Trade
If we can begin to measure a writer's intellectual character at least partly by whom they pick their fights with, then Bill Greider should come out pretty well, because he has consistently gone after the "bullies" behind the status quo that have led the nation into a very deep ditch. The term bullies is not employed casually here, because I'm thinking of the intensity and intellectual arrogance with which the "free-trade" dogma has been wielded during the 1980's and 1990's against opponents and skeptics alike. The dogma has been breaking down in recent years, and the damage done and the needed corrections are taken up in two great chapters in Come Home America, "Blinded by Faith" and Second Opinions."

At the core of the great "free trade" theory has been the belief that all citizens and all countries benefit from pursuing the freest possible trade between nations, based on each nation's comparative advantage. Let me have some fun with this: the old idea was that Central America sends us bananas and coffee, and the US sends them our autos. What's that you say, doesn't that give a big advantage to the auto producing nation? Yes, right you are, and you are successfully on the way to thinking for yourself, just like Japan, China, and the Asian Tigers did, nations who never bought the myths at face value, and practiced their own version of the actual US history in the 19th century of "borrowing" blueprints and technology from England, throwing up stiff manufacturing tariffs, and working very hard to nurture and master the industrial processes that seemed to lay behind the economic great achievers in the West. But the front and center, and very painful contemporary exhibit number one, for US citizens, is the great trade imbalance between the US and China. The continuing imbalances, under greatly varying economic circumstances, running to the hundreds of billions of dollars per year in China's favor, have led to a grand re-examination of the old theories of that everyone benefits.

"`What countries want and what companies want are different...'"
The US has entered this relationship with eyes wide open throughout its "pursuit" of China trade, despite our ritual denunciations of Chinese currency management. US multinational corporations were the driving force behind the Clinton administration's relentless effort to bring China into full membership of the World Trade Organization - something not yet achieved by Russia. It's fair to say the Clinton administration worked harder for this objective than they did for their failed version of national health insurance. But the core idea here is that China and most other nations pursue their national interest despite our professional economists' intense love affair with "free trade," while the US turns its national policy over to US international corporations. Greider cites former IBM executive Ralph Gomory's succinct re-appraisal (a co-author with William Baumol of Global Trade and Conflicting National Interest, MIT Press, 2001) of what has been going on for 30 years: "`What countries want and what companies want are different.'" (This reviewer's emphasis.) And whatever the China trade has done for individual corporate bottom lines, it has, in effect, taken our nation as a whole to the economic cleaners compared to what it has done for China the nation.

A Little Chat with Bob Rubin and Alan Blinder
And that leads us to, in the Chapter called "Second Thoughts," to Greider's interviews with one of globalization's chief practitioners, Robert Rubin, and one of its chief academic defenders, economist Alan Blinder of Princeton University. By Bill's account, the Rubin interview went more smoothly than the Blinder one, but then doesn't everything seem smoother when it comes to Bob Rubin? The American people have never seen a smoother driver, yet he still has managed to drive us off the road. This is a fascinating part of the book, and our national story, and can't receive full justice here. But there was a compelling purpose behind Greider's questions. Rubin has seen the severe negative consequences of the theories for portions of the US citizenry and wanted to soften the blows somewhat, if quite belatedly, with the proposals pushed in his Hamilton Project - yet despite the damage, he won't abandon either the theory or the basic practices.

Blinder is led into some pretty damaging "no exit" intellectual corners, when it comes to the loss of manufacturing jobs: "`You can call it fatalism...but, given the almost immutable laws of economics and history, I think this is the case. It's pretty inevitable. Now we have to be dealing with other kinds of jobs.'" Yet he himself had acknowledged very recently in a major Foreign Affairs magazine article that as many as 30-40 million seemingly secure middle class job could be outsourced overseas due to rapid changes in communication technology. Greider quotes from the article to show that Blinder knows where this is heading politically: "He warned fellow experts: `If we economists stubbornly insist on chanting `Free trade is good for you' to people who know that it is not, we will quickly become irrelevant to the public debate.'" Yet what Greider is driving at, and he throws in conclusions to this effect from Paul Krugman's writings, is that the former unreserved defenders of free trade and globalization now recognize the vast shortcomings, but have little to offer except "fatalism" when it comes to dramatically changing the system.

We'll be hearing a lot about national character from the Republican Right in coming months as they try to tell Americans why some of Western Europe's terribly over- civilized refinements won't work in rugged, entrepreneurial, risk-taking America (universal health care, for starters), and so it's about time we make some "national character" assertions of our own from the left: since when have Americans ever submitted to Blinder's "almost immutable laws of economics and history?" And just as Bill Greider has rejected Kevin Phillip's seemingly inevitable "declining empire" fate for the US, he rejects the fatalism of our high bishops of free trade, even if they have passed through a mild, secular Reformation of sorts. Something should be done, and something can be done. So what does Greider propose?

Steps to Reverse the Trade Deficit
Before Beltway insiders read what follows, this reviewer wants to issue his own "Fair Warning": keep aspirin and cell phones handy, you are not going to like this.

* "First, stop the bleeding. Cap the US trade deficits and force them to shrink gradually until the country reached a rough equivalent of balanced trade with the rest of the world. This can be achieved by a general emergency tariff authorized under the WTO's Charter...
* Second, impose national obligations on the actions of US multinational corporations and investment capital firms. These requirements can be enforced the old fashioned way - by taxation...
* Third, launch a broad, aggressive strategy to rebuild the national economy at home and restore economic equity and security in society. ..Rebuild the common assets of society...and finance the development of new industrial sectors that will create millions of new jobs..."

While I trust that the second and third points are sufficient to induce severe forms of indigestion among the Washington elite, it is the first one, the "general emergency tariff" invocation that is most likely to require the aspirin, and later, the 911 call. Greider, however, is no fool about these matters. He doesn't recommend we pursue the abruptness and secrecy of Nixon's 1971 initiatives, his acting unilaterally, "consulting no one," when "he abruptly devalued the dollar, imposed tariffs, and dumped the Bretton Woods agreement..."

Lessons from the Home Front: World War II
It is to wartime experience of another sort, however, that Greider directs us to in Chapter 13, called "The Reckoning." And that experience is the USA home front during World War II, the scene of our nation's last great pulling together, at least one also stamped by significant personal sacrifices all around. The production of homes and cars ceased during these years so that raw materials could go into ships, planes and tanks. Luxury goods were out of reach, and other important items like gasoline, sugar and meat were carefully rationed. Savings soared, because consumption was discouraged, but also because everyone was employed at good wages. Business investment took off, and so did the economy, "expanding by as much as 16 percent in a single year. From 1939 to 1945, the national economy virtually doubled in size and per capita income rose by 40 percent." The national savings rate hit an unheard of 25 percent. Could this really have been the same country which would be by 2008, the world's greatest debtor nation, with a negative savings rate? How was this great economic undertaking of 1940-1945 accomplished? Ah, well, now here are some facts and lessons that Republicans in Congress, and Blue Dog Democrats, won't be talking about on C-Span, and I also don't think you'll be hearing much of it from the likes of Peter Peterson either. Unfortunately for those seeking to undermine President Obama's domestic budget proposals, the great economic achievements of World War II, and the prosperity of the 1950's that followed, were built on public debt that was spent on productive investment.

The New Deal had pushed public debt up to 40% of GDP, Greider tells us; WWII left that debt at an astounding level of 120% of GDP: "This unheard-of-burden naturally alarmed people. Many thought the nation was bankrupt and feared it would slide back into depression after the war." Yet the three decades after World War II turned out to be the nation's most prosperous - and that prosperity was widely shared. The wartime economic game plan was proof of the overall validity of Keynesian ideas, and Greider reminds us that the American right was busy throughout the war denouncing the governmental intrusions as socialism. Sound familiar to anyone in 2009? (The current CBO ten year projections are for cumulative federal debt to peak at 82% in 2019, double the 41% level in 2008).

The crucial point is that the absolute level of debt is less important than the purposes for which the debt is taken on. If it goes for massive tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens, continued subsidies to the old carbon based industries and for wheelbarrows full of cash dumped in the Iraqi desert - as happened between 2000-2008, then that will be less productive than long term investments in domestic public infrastructure, including a whole new energy configuration. Greider sees our current crisis as offering us a chance to remake ourselves under conditions that mirror the home front years of 1939-1945, although the level of sacrifice and saving doesn't have to be on the same scale of intensity.


Can We Afford It?
Closely related to this intellectual struggle over the nature and extent of the crisis we are in is the debate over whether we can "afford" some of the proposals for health care, education and a new green energy regime contained in the Obama budget - much less some of the ones suggested by Greider, picking up from FDR's "second Bill of Rights," from the 1944 State of the Union Message, the one where Roosevelt declared that "Necessitous men are not free men." (A phrase I've never heard our contemporary conservatives, obsessed as they are with their definitions of freedom, quote). Some of this falls under the criticism that Obama is trying to do "too much" all at once, and that he should stay focused on short term stimulus and not drive up the budget deficits and long term debt with these ambitious new investments. Yet I hear the "can we afford it" lamentations, and excuses, far too often, even from supposed progressive Democrats, and this comes from one of the most affluent counties in one of the nation's most affluent states, Montgomery County, Maryland. Part of the answer lies in what happened during World War II, as Greider has shown: long term investments can pay off, even at the cost of larger public debt. So here is Bill Greider's answer to whether we can afford some of the public programs now being talked about, and others we might want:

My answer to the cost question is simple: The American people cannot have everything we might want, but we can afford anything that other advanced nations have, from guaranteed health care to modern high-speed rail systems, because we are a lot richer than the others. We can afford anything they can afford - if the American people choose different priorities... The United States has a per capita income of $41, 890. That is one-third greater than Japan's per capita income of $31, 386; Germany's, $29,461; Sweden's, $32,525; and Kuwait's, $26,321...When Americans recognize that money is not the issue, they can consider the real question: What kind of society do we want? What do people need to lead satisfying lives? (My emphasis).

If readers will pause and think about those last two questions posed by Bill Greider, they'll begin to realize the poverty of our current political debates, not of our national resources. It's a glimpse into the questions and dreams he hopes citizens will start to explore as they see our current situation as one not just of deep economic threat, which it surely is, but one that also creates a great opening through "`...the crack of history...'" for national renewal, and a more mature society. What he is hoping for, expressed in the broadest possible terms, "is a higher definition of `life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Now that's something really worth returning home for.

William R. Neil
Rockville, MD

I have made it a point to read all of Mr. Greider's Books. I find him to be an honest interpreter of current events. I consider him my civics teacher. He has been all over the world and has a big overview of what is happening. He knows banking. He knows economics. He knows Washington politics. He knows world trade. He knows people. And he knows and respects all of us "little" regular folks. Most important of all he has and is concerned with moral character - right and wrong; fair and unfair - what the old school once called "Social Justice."

I was very surprised to read in this book that Mr. Greider was a product of a Republican upbringing. He states that if his back was put to the wall he would choose Democrat over Republican. I don't have to have my back to the wall to make the same choice - yet I find myself often as critical of both sides as Mr. Greider.

I think Mr. Greider has come to the age where he feels any beating around the bush to be a waste of his valuable time. In this book he is very open with regards to his motivation, his goals and his dreams for America.

He has covered the Washington political scene and found our elected representatives less than inspiring. He has covered lobbying and the moneyed interests and their hold on our system. He has written an exhausting book on the Federal Reserve. He has been hired to speak to bankers by the bankers. He has been warning of this economic and financial disaster for years. He has challenged the top economists on their principles - especially Free Trade and the Global economy. He has found little hope anywhere in the established system but yet he remains strong to his commitment to a personal optimism.

He compares his long and frustrating career to that of a bag lady standing on a corner somewhere in America, screeching to a crowd as they zoom by, unaware and unconcerned.

But who does he place his trust in if not the Fed, the president, the Senate, the Congress, the bankers, the CEOs and CFOs, the corporate giants, the international conglomerates, the boldest and brightest, the movers and shakers? Who is there left?

Mr. Greider places his faith in "we" the people - all the people and democracy. Democracy doesn't scare him. He loves it - the more the better.

He compares "we, the people" to an underground river. A river that rolls along beneath the surface. A river that is sometimes dry and sometimes a raging torrent. A river of people's varying opinions and ideas, a river of support, outrage and often society changing currents. Mr. Greider sees that river rising in America today. He wants to see it flood its caverns and fill our country with hope, change and, most of all, action.
In this book Mr. Greider cheers for an American Democracy of the people, by the people and for the people. He doesn't know how the people will do it. He doesn't know what they will actually do but in true optimist tradition he is hoping that today's underground river will swell into a deluge of change and moral economic character, true patriotism, and social justice. He wants to see a new focus on America and its people. Not isolationist but realistic and sensible - sensible to all of its citizens and not just the wealthy, the bankers, the stock brokers, and all the pointy-headed intellectuals and international investors.

When Mr. Greider says "Come Home, America" that is exactly what he means - Come Home America! Come home all of you Americans and bring your ingenuity, your inventive spirit, your investment capital, your love of your own, and let's rebuild this country into something that we all can be proud of as Americans.

Richard Noble - The Hobo Philosopher - Author of:

"The Eastpointer" Selections from award winning column.

Greider seems like a nice man, the kind of man who helps old ladies across the street or gets cats out of trees. The kind of man my conservative friends call a bleeding heart liberal. But his careful analysis of the problems facing the United States as well as the problems the rest of the world have in coming to grips with the military power of the United States, makes this book well worth reading. If you agree with his conclusions or not, go read it.

In Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country William Greider presents a readable view of the current financial crisis and how we got here. He puts the spotlight on big banks, big business, and Wall Street and their collusion with our government over the last 30 yrs. Congress is in the pocket of these three, forming an oligarchy which rules for itself to the detriment of the middle class and the poor. The people need to take back their government with reasonable rules and regulations for the control of the financial system and business and to restore real democracy in the USA before we complete our downward spiral into a banana republic.

In my back room are TWO copies of William Greider's Who Will Tell the People. Greider, from a rich-guy world, worked Rolling Stone as international correspondent, then Washington Post, now The Nation. He's still helping us sort the tough stuff out...
What I love about his current book, Come Home, America, is he points the way to a populist solution to our economic/global meltdown by examples of the people telling FDR that we need a Social Security system and labor rights.
"Politicians need people to stand up to them," he says "President's, too."
(repost from [...])

COME HOME,AMERICA is William Greider's best book yet. It's one of a number of recent books that was written to address the current financial catastrophe. His viewpoint is more of a populist view.

Some of the many issues that he correctly assesses in this book are the military expenses that could be spent on domestic programs rather than maintaining a military presence around the globe.
And the Federal Reserves direct role in globalization and loss of American jobs in outsourcing.
Mr. Greider details the Fed's role in favoring Wall Street and screwing the middle class laborers.
He advocates reforming the Fed.

On page 32 the author explains one of the problems in our government-
"Under both Democrats and Republicans, the U.S. government first and foremost promotes and defends the fortunes of America's multinational corporations and financial firms."

He also takes a critical(and accurate)look at U.S.- China trade relations.

Mr. Greider offers ideas for redeeming some of what our country has lost.
I like his two-pronged solution to the depletion of American jobs and the gradual death of the middle class.

This book is stimulating at a time when thinking and government policies are in need of a change.

This is required reading. Greider discusses many contemporary complex problems without bombarding the reader with details. He also offers optimism towards change using the daunting challenges faced by the Civil Rights movement as an example. Will comfortable consumers risk their lifestyles for change? I doubt it. Maybe if they lose their jobs.

Why no discussion on how health insurance paid by the employer enslaves the employee not to strike? IOW's Americans aren't in the streets because they won't risk their family's health coverage. This is criminal.

I did have a problem with Chapter 9 and his discussion on the military. He states the US has never wanted to be an empire without acknowledging the US National Interests that are behind most wars. This reader knows better. It is common sense to link the US military with US corporations such as the Iraq War to Haliburton, KPR, and Blackwater. War is big business. Seems purposely not included.

The discussion on debt and the Fed are essential. I would have liked debt to be explored in more depth.

I recommend this book highly. For the first time, I may buy more copies for friends.

Noted commentator William Greider shows how the USA's "democracy is broken." He points out, "we have two parties representing capital." He urges the American people to stop their state `trying to run the world'.

The USA is a corporate state, in which huge corporations use their political clout to win privileges from government. The state diverts public cash into private hands. It seems to be right to protect capital and corporations, but wrong to protect workers and unions. For example, in 1979, the Federal Reserve Bank's anti-inflation policy increased the value of money, and so of assets (stocks and bonds), benefiting most those with most, holding down wages and growth for years.

Globalisation is bad for the USA; it borrows to consume more than it produces. It exports jobs and imports debt. Its trade deficit in manufactured goods was $130 billion in 1999, $500 billion in 2009.

Greider shows how corrupt capitalists (and their media) are: "More than 115 companies have been caught backdating stock options for senior executives (including celebrity CEO Steve Jobs of Apple) to inflate the value of their bonuses. But the Wall Street Journal pleaded their innocence: `Were all of the CEOs, CFOs and general counsels at all of these companies greedy and corrupt? Seems unlikely,' an editorial insisted."

He shows how finance capital rips us off. For example, "Deregulation created a rich opportunity for financial players. ... Wall Street hedge funds developed a very lucrative market in buying and selling utility companies and power plants, quickly doubling or tripling returns to their investors. Each time ownership was flipped, hedge funds took their profits and left the electric companies deeper in debt - forcing them to raise their rates for customers."

Aggression abroad mirrors exploitation at home. Greider points to the ghastly wars against Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. He calls the Korean War `a hideous mistake'. He notes that Alan Greenspan admitted, "The Iraq war is largely about oil", and that "both political parties are, in practice, united in a `war party' that supports and finances militarism."

His book abounds with telling facts: under Bush, family debt doubled to $7 trillion. The USA is one of only five countries without a national policy of paid maternity leave. Billionaire speculator Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.

Finally, Greider proposes solutions to all these problems, believing, "The people are not the problem. The people are the solution." Americans need to `rebuild the national economy at home and restore economic equity and security in society.'

He sums up, "Reconstruction requires vast federal spending devoted to public investments. Rebuild the common assets of society (ranging from worn-out bridges to social guarantees) and finance the development of new industrial sectors that will create millions of new jobs."

Rebuilding the USA will create jobs for Americans. The USA should borrow to create. In 1946, US government debt was 120 per cent of GDP, but, invested in new factories and new technologies, it generated jobs and wages and created the new wealth that supported better lives for the people.

Excellent, although overly optimistic in his solutions to the dire state of our corporatocracy. His solutions require that citizens become much more open minded and knowledgeable about our broken political system, rather than just reacting emotionally to manipulative political propaganda and shallow patriotic and religious rhetoric. His fixes require that people shrug off the dogma imprinted on them in early childhood by their parental, religious, educational and media environments and actually critically review their ingrained beliefs, logically and less emotionally. This doesn't seem to be the trend lately, and corporations and the wealthy elite have been able to take advantage of that by employing massive campaign contributions and a "divide and conquer" social strategy. Overwhelmingly, people believe what they are predisposed to believe and react emotionally when that belief is threatened, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Our opinions have been emotionally and manipulatively instilled in us from before we were old enough to reason and question, and few of us have been even partially capable of avoiding our ongoing programing. We are almost entirely a product of our ethnocentrism. But, maybe I'm overly pessimistic.

I just finished reading William Grieder's "Come Home America (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country." So engaging, the book kept me up most of the night.

If you read just one book this year, let it be this one. Unless you're a billionaire. Everyone will find it engaging.

This is a bi-partisan book. It tells it like it is about both of our political parties who are serving the corporations and their lobbyists. Everything being done in Washington is done for Big Business. Nothing is being done for the citizens. Nothing will ever be done for we citizens under the current operating system. You need to be a lobbyist to get the ear of our political parties these days.

--Where we are financially in our country. (in massive debt).

--Why it's not going away and will only get worse. Soon. And much worse.

--And what the political elites from both parties are doing right now to dismantle Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid.

They claim we cannot afford these programs. Yet trillions were spent (of our money) on bail-outs for the financial institutions. Bail-outs caused by de-regulation of these institutions and their own greed.

--In Washington, there's no talk of reducing the military budget. No talk of reducing our trillions of debt owed to China and Japan. But lots of talk on how to dismantle Social Security and other social safety nets.

Seems we're in deep doo-doo. Hang on to your hats. Looks like it's going to get worse unless we citizens wake up.

Unless you're one of the top fortunate 2% of the billionaires--then you're very happy with the status quo and don't want to change a thing.

The rest of us? Warren Buffet is quoted in the book as having said words to the effect, "Unless we change directions, we're all going to become a nation of sharecroppers." And Mr. Buffet is a very wise man.

Time for a third party? Might be our only hope. A third of our nation is already registered Independent.

What do you think?

This may be the most important book I've ever read.