Economist is Dedicated to Exposing “Plunder and Blunder”
By Fran Quigley
Did you hear about the job interview where the boss asked a mathematician, an accountant, and an economist to provide answers to the question, “What does two plus two equal?”
The mathematician said “four,” and the accountant said, “Anywhere between two and six, averaging out to four.”
The economist looked around in a conspiratorial manner, leaned over, and whispered to the boss, “What do you want it to add up to be?”
Dean Baker is not laughing. In his book, Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research says the country’s leading economists have been too busy cozying up to the proverbial bosses to get the equation right, especially when it came to the deadly housing bubble.
Harry Truman’s famous wish for a one-armed economist comes true in the person of Baker, who does not equivocate when it comes to laying blame for the current financial crisis.
Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan is “the leading villain,” Baker writes, who “mastered the art of currying the favor of the rich and powerful.” The financial industry “proved to be more incompetent and corrupt than its worst critics could have imagined.” Our elected government let us down, too. “Where was the Treasury Department during the Clinton and Bush administrations? What about congressional oversight?” Baker asks.
One of Baker’s chief missions is to confront the media’s abysmal economic reporting that caused the citizenry to sit blindfolded in the back seat while the financial industry drove the country’s economy into the ditch. In a phone interview, Baker said, “The media generally did a poor job in questioning the forecasts of the economics profession, and even now, most reporters seem intent on minimizing the problem.”
Through his reports via the CEPR think tank (which, it notes, operates on a budget less than half of the average AIG executive’s yearly bonus), and his “Beat the Press” blog on the site of the American Prospect, Baker issues a relentless barrage of criticism of media coverage of financial matters.
Baker recently accused NPR of conspiring with realtors to “fleece first- time home buyers,” the New York Times of using “a personal tragedy to editorialize for wealthy executives,” and the Washington Post of conducting a “jihad” on Social Security.
in addition to the broadsides, Baker offers prescriptions. He favors employer tax credits for extending health care coverage and increasing paid time off of work, a takeover of more banks (a recent Baker column is entitled, “The Banks Have Stolen Enough; It’s Time to Take Them Over”) , a temporary change in foreclosure rules to allow homeowners to stay in their houses and pay market rent, and a tax on financial transactions.
“We can’t undo the damage, but we can try to create a system that will prevent such catastrophes from recurring,” he writes in Plunder and Blunder. “ As anyone who has lost a job or watched a retirement account wither can tell you, Baker’s message is no laughing matter.
This column is online at
http://www.indystar.com/article/20090504/OPINION12/905040305/1002/OPINION Fran Quigley
Indiana-Kenya Partnership/USAID-AMPATH
1001 West 10th Street, OPW M200
Indianapolis, IN 46202
www.iukenya.org
www.ampathkenya.org
reprinted with permission
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