Hail Emperor Reich


Tuesday May 15th, 2012   •   Posted by Burt Abrams at 4:32pm PDT   •   4 Comments

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Will Rogers claimed to have never met a man that he didn’t like. I’m consistent too. I never read anything by Robert Reich that I liked. Dr. Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and currently a named professor at UC Berkeley, is at it again. In writing for the U.K.’s The Guardian, April 23, 2012, Reich lays out a re-election economic game plan to enable President Obama to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Reich identifies four villains: big banks, oil speculators, anyone attempting to cut government spending and, of course, income inequality. My own dislike of big banks raised a fear in me that I might lose my perfect score in disagreeing with Dr. Reich. Big banks have all the mismanagement problems of big corporations and big governments: wasteful activities that benefit the management at the expense of the owner-voters. But in reading Dr. Reich’s position on big banks, my fear dissolved. Dr. Reich is not opposed to big banks per se—only big banks that do not do his imperial biddings. President Obama, according to Reich, should threaten banks. If they do not “provide meaningful relief to homeowners,” he’ll break up the biggest ones and resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act to prevent commercial banks from engaging in investment banking activities. Presumably, if banks do Imperial Washington’s public policy activities, they can remain too-big-to-fail and continue to go their merry way taking outrageous financial risks under implicit and explicit federal guarantees. Oh, and big banks don’t forget to make your obligatory campaign contributions.

Read Reich’s imperial edicts



4 Responses to “Hail Emperor Reich”

  1. libertarian jerry says:

    Why would anyone pay attention to a socialist cretin like Robert Reich has always been a mystery to me. The problem arises as a matter of Liberal Bias and uneven Main Stream Media reporting. Whenever Mr.Reich and people with his prospective on economics are interviewed there is hardly ever a Free Market counter argument allowed as a follow up. This blatantly unfair reporting may be acceptable to some,but the real problem arises when the Robert Reichs of this world are allowed access to the levers of power. Not only are Mr.Reich’s socialist views wrong,but they also belong on the trash heap of history. The damage done to America’s economy by the Socialist/Keynesian policies of the Federal Government over the last 50 or 60 years are incalculable. Yet these policies are allowed to continue. Is it any wonder why our standard of living has declined over the last 40 years. Yet we still have Robert Reich interviews that allow his misguided views to be disseminated. Its a mystery.

  2. >> “Second, he should stop oil speculators from raising gas prices. Numerous studies are showing that speculation by US index-fund traders is pushing up gas prices by almost $1 a gallon.”

    In a perfect world, a ridiculous statement like that would require one to forfeit his economics degree.

  3. Gary Benson says:

    I agree. Communication is important for business but I’m not always a confident communicator, although I often read textbooks and journals on the subject. I usually leave the communicating to others or as I see it, in more capable hands but it just makes me feel disappointed to some extent. The Internet is the future for communication and it should be used for that purpose.

  4. John Phillips says:

    In his most recent book, Aftershock, Reich explains his theory regarding how income inequality and the rich harm everyone else. Living in West LA, I have had to endure lectures from Reich’s starry-eyed adherents. As a result, I posted a one-star review of Aftershock on Amazon under the pseudonym, Jorge Sorosa (a joke). I had to switch to the pseudonym after some of the negative comments became creepy. I won’t repeat what I say there, because the review explains, in detail, my impression of Reich’s work.

    On Amazon, there are over a hundred five-star reviews for Aftershock. Few mention evidence for their opinions. To get a perspective on the reading habits of the average Amazon customer, you might consider that, for example, James Q. Wilson’s books get fewer than a dozen reviews. But his reviewers are more literate than hundreds of Reich’s.

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