Greenspin City

[Naomi Klein's new book The Shock Doctrine is cold kicking ass, making the papers and getting tongues wagging. That's because it is filled with the truth about disaster capitalism, which Morphizm has been crowing about ever since we syndicated her article, "The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." It's a sick trend that goes back thousands of years, even though she sticks mostly to the post-Friedman phase. Not to nitpick: That's decades worth of screw jobs. Here she is with a smackdown of Alan Greenspan, the economic oracle who somehow was too stoopid to realize his endless rate cuts were jacking the nation for billions -- ST]

Alan Greenspan: The Myth of the True Believer
[Naomi Klein, Morphizm]
The tall graduate student, visiting the United States from Sweden, would not be satisfied with a quip. He wanted answers.

"They cannot only be driven by greed and power. They must be driven by something higher. What?"

Don't knock power and greed, I tried to suggest -- they have built empires. But he wanted more.

"What about a belief that they are building a better world?"

Since I began touring with my book The Shock Doctrine, I have had a number of exchanges like this, revolving around the same basic question: When hard-right political leaders and their advisers apply brutal economic shock therapy, do they honestly believe the trickle-down effects will build equitable societies -- or are they just deliberately creating the conditions for yet another corporate feeding frenzy? Put bluntly, Has the world been transformed over the past three decades by lofty ideology or by lowly greed?

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