Volcker: Greatest Crisis is Collapse of Governance

February 15, 2010 (LPAC)—Former Federal Reserve Chairman and ostensible Obama economic advisor, Paul Volcker, gave an interview today to CNN's Fareed Zakaria, in which he bluntly declared that the greatest crisis facing the United States is a total collapse in governance. In what was the closest thing to an attack on the Obama Administration, Volcker pointed out that, one year into the Obama Presidency, the Senate has yet to confirm an undersecretary of treasury for domestic or international affairs. He told Zakaria that, in all his life, the incapacity for governance in the United States has never been so grave. Asked, again, at the close of his interview what he saw as the gravest problem in the immediate period ahead, he said, "the crisis in governance." He emphasized that there is no alternative to American leadership of the world, and right now, there is no real American leadership.

While there was no mention of Glass-Steagall, Volcker responded to a question about the need for reregulation, by saying that a framework must be established for non-banking institutions to be put through "euthanasia," not rescue. He also argued that the United States must revive its manufacturing base, citing a 20-year trend toward "financial engineering" at the expense of chemical and civil engineering. He again returned to the issue of governance and policy-making, noting that the cost of shipping a ton of steel from China to the United States is equal to the total labor cost of producing the same ton of steel in the United States. So the argument that labor costs are prohibitive to a revival of American basic manufacturing is untrue. He repeated his frequently cited comment, that the only useful financial innovation in the past 30 years has been the ATM machine.

 

LaRouche Addresses Imminent Hyperinflation Threat. NEW DARK AGE !

The New Dark Age.