Q & A | 04/28/2009 12:00 am

Naomi Klein: 'The Wall Street Bailout Is the Greatest Heist in Monetary History'

Naomi Klein © Ed Kashi

Editor’s Note: Naomi Klein is the award-winning author of the international bestsellers The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. She writes a regular column for The Nation magazine and The Guardian newspaper that is syndicated internationally by The New York Times Syndicate. Her articles have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Globe and Mail and The New York Times. She wrote and co-produced “The Take,” an award-winning feature documentary about Argentina’s occupied factory movement.

As all the pieces of all the world’s economy started crashing around our heads, I realized that the person I most wanted to ask about it all was Naomi Klein, whom I had met briefly last year when Laurie Anderson put together a protest evening at St. Anne’s. Naomi Klein’s books, No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, examined the roots of what is happening now. Here’s what she had to say about the present crisis. -JJB

JOAN JULIET BUCK: You must be having some very intense reactions to everything that’s happening right now.

NAOMI KLEIN: It’s an adventure reading the paper every morning.

JOAN: Where does that leave the end of history?

NAOMI: So many of the debates that we were told are over are reemerging. That’s the good part of what’s going on right now. There were so many attempts to arbitrarily claim that ideas about social justice, about economic justice, were finished, and there’s only one model. In The Shock Doctrine I quote Larry Summers, from back in 1991 when he was a honcho at the World Bank. He was talking about the World Bank policies that used to be called The Washington Consensus. And he said, “Spread the truth — the laws of economics are like the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere.” It was all about deregulation, privatization, the market is always best, the market’s always supreme. And there was the feeling of certainty — that we had figured everything out. Summers even said a couple of years later that there are many basic economic ideas that are “passé” — no longer worthy of debate. One of the issues that he listed as over was the idea that government could invest in programs to stimulate the economy. And here he is … right!

JOAN: What does the present moment mean?

NAOMI: It’s created space; there’s new oxygen to propose alternatives. One of the things that I try to show in my book is that these debates were not won on their own merits. They were often won using violence, by actually eliminating the left, in countries in Latin America, and then declaring ideological victory.

JOAN: In The New Yorker, you’re quoted as saying, “This is a progressive moment. It’s ours to lose.” What did you mean?

NAOMI: Capitalism is on trial. And you have an organic, grassroots, sort of spontaneous revolt against the elite – which is actually what we’re hearing with this rage at CEOs, and bonuses and government collusion with the elites. Rage is an opportunity. The rage is there, and the country is seething, the world is seething with rage. The question is, where is it going to be directed? I feel there’s a moral responsibility for the Left and for progressives to provide an alternative in this moment that is moral, that is principled, that is just, that is hopeful, because if we don’t, then that anger is so easily directed at “those damn Mexican immigrants,” at “the first African American president.” So I feel a tremendous sense of urgency. It’s not just, “Hey, our time has come.” It’s, “We’d better get our act together because this anger is going somewhere.”

JOAN: Now, who would the leaders of this Left be?

NAOMI: That is a very complicated question in the United States right now. Pretty much everywhere else in the world, besides maybe North Korea, there’s a really healthy distrust of those in power. You know, people are in the streets in this moment, as well they should be – whether it’s in France or whether it’s in Britain or Iceland. They may have a left-leaning government, like the government of Gordon Brown. But that doesn’t mean they’re giving him a pass. In Britain the choice is very clear. The anger is either going to be directed at the banks or it’s going to be directed at immigrants. I’m not afraid of it being directed at the banks. I’m appalled at news that there’s a 17-year-old girl who is facing jail time for having a few beers and breaking a window at the RBS Bank during the G-20 protests, when not a single banker is going to jail for burning down the global economy. What kind of a system is that? I think we should rally to this young woman’s defense. What you see again and again in Europe is that, in this critical moment, there is an opposition that is organizing with this healthy distrust of power. In the U.S., Obama mania complicates this.

JOAN: You said, talking about the Obama video "Yes We Can," "Now, finally, a politician is making ads that are as good as Nike."

155 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

And less ‘ladies’ amongst the Libs!!!!

By Diamond In The Rough on 04/30/2009 9:59 am

e-mail alert

Calm down, Ms Cornelia. I certainly mean this in the best way, but is your job devoted to spreading ignorance?

By Callie O on 09/22/2009 8:47 pm

e-mail alert

the term "lady" gets less specific every day. ;)

By Amanda C on 04/29/2009 2:48 pm

e-mail alert

Thanks for responding. I directed my comment to the left since Ms. Klein had done the same. But since you’ve detected my more conservative bent, I will say one thing. While you’re right that all political orientations can be guilty of manipulating public opinion for their gain, too many outspoken people on the left seem to take high-minded pride in doing it. After all, they are the ones with sophisticated, nuanced views the general public can not fully appreciate.

A nice start would be electing truly competent people from either party to hold political office. That seems to be something we are no longer capable of doing.

By John McGrath on 04/29/2009 6:51 am

e-mail alert

That’s your opinion. Our opinion is that there is so much misinformation being spread like a cancer through this country by the Right Wing hacks on FOX who are aided by the dittoheads who would rather have the spin spoon fed to them by Limbaugh than actually use their brains and learn some real history and some real facts.

After 8 years of Bush doing is utmost to take this country down and hand it to a few select corporations, the hypocrasy of the Right Wingers, who will not ‘pace their rage’ over the fact that they lost the election to a real leader and the only way to spin that is to make stuff up, is beyond frustrating.

By DeBúrca obj on 04/29/2009 7:49 am

e-mail alert

typo: ‘his utmost’ not ‘is’ utmost

By DeBúrca obj on 04/29/2009 7:49 am

e-mail alert

My opinion is mine which suits me OK. Whereas, your use of the collective "our" indicates you are appointed spokesman for everyone else? Thank you for so effectively demonstrating my whole point. And by the way, I wasn’t defending any politician, Bush or anyone else. My frustration is with both parties.

By John McGrath on 04/29/2009 8:52 am

e-mail alert

John when you refer to people as the collective "left" the correct response is to use the collective ‘our’.

By DeBúrca obj on 04/29/2009 2:56 pm

e-mail alert

Where on earth HAVE you been? There’s been a noticeable gap in the far left gab.

We don’t mind that you’re still writing…as long as you don’t mind that we’re not reading it.

By Callie O on 09/22/2009 8:35 pm

e-mail alert

Why on earth, Ms Deburca, do you worry so much about Fox and Rush Limbaugh when you have every other media outlet spreading the liberal jam on your toast?

You’ll never convince the conservative element here that this president knows any more about leadership than a pig knows about ballroom dancing.

You have delighted us long enough. Waaaaayyy long enough.

By Callie O on 09/22/2009 8:49 pm

e-mail alert

We had those silly "tea parties" in TX, too. A lot of photo ops, messes to be cleaned up afterwards, lots of loud mouths spouting their usual hate drivel like Ted Nugent accompanied by their geetars and nothing worthwhile accomplished by the mob. What a waste of time, effort and energy. There was also a group traveling across the U.S. from Washington, holding meetings to get peoples input and complaints to be addressed and hardly any newspaper announced these meetings and few people bothered to show up for these events, where their voices could be heard in a sane, sensible format.

By JJ GB on 04/29/2009 8:51 am

e-mail alert

Ah, JJ….I went to a couple of events to check them out for myself.

You have such a stunningly superficial knowledge of what goes on it’s almost embarrassing to listen to you.

I think there’s a term for this….Ninnyhammer?

By Callie O on 09/22/2009 8:52 pm

e-mail alert

That very well may be that your experience was different than mine-doesn’t negate what I saw, heard and observed here. Calling me names doesn’t serve any purpose either or change what I experienced. How clever of you to attack what you don’t know-what happened here. While there may be some who were there for legitimate reasons, there were as many or more kooks in the crowd as others.

By JJ GB on 09/23/2009 8:23 am

e-mail alert

Capitalism is on trial. While this plays out, it is imperative to remember that our economic system is only a part of who we are as a nation. In our cynicism,, we have invented phrases like the "Almighty Buck" that are self-deprecating in nature. At our core live concepts of freedom, life, liberty, justice, valor, honor, integrity, equality, and patriotism. The last idea is founded in the mandate to look back and ask, "why were our predecessors willing to lay down their lives and pursuit of personal happiness to pursue the real American dream?" It surely must have been important!

Bush had one thing right, extremism is what we are fighting. Extreme capitalism is as dangerous as any other idea that gets out of balance. For instance, Democracy is beautiful -forcing it on other countries is an idealogical paradox. Why didn’t we protest that? A few did protest but we never heard what happened to them, the media was too busy with whatever they were doing back then. What is the media doing now? Oversaturating the market with the loveliness of the Obama family, and oversaturating the market with swine flu. It would appear from the news that there is nothing else going on the world. I mean I like the Obama family but I don’t really need or want to know EVERY move they make, every breath they take, every smile they fake, every claim they stake… In other words ,Obamania isn’t going to help either.

Knowing my debts, I write with a heavy heart. So many people to pay, so many behaviors to change. If I stop believing in my country, I stop believing in my own ability to change my course in a free country.

By S M on 04/29/2009 11:15 am

e-mail alert

My friend Naomi, if I am not mistaken, Larry Summer’s 1991 quote, "Spread the truth — the laws of economics are like the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere.” referred not to "deregulation, privatization, the market is always best, the market’s always supreme," but to the fact that the underlying principles are not situational.

May I remind you, my friend, that in 1989 at a National Bureau of Economic Research Conference, Summers told a fictional but vivid story of a big financial crisis, complete with examples of specific events and how people might react to them. Seeing it concretized as an imaginary history, and placed in the near future — in just two years, in 1991 — made it seem more real and familiar.

He said that this crisis would be preceded by an enormous stock market boom, bringing the Dow to the unimagined high of 5,400 by October 1991. (The Dow was at 2,600 on the day of the conference; 5,400 would be 13,000 today if scaled up in proportion to gross domestic product.)

Euphoria gripped the investors of his fictional universe. “The notion that recessions were a thing of the past took hold,” Mr. Summers said. He added that over a 15-year period through 1990 — a time that included the 1987 crash — investors earned an average real return of 11 percent. The popular view was that “with a reduced cyclical element, the future would be even brighter.”

Furthermore, he said, “lawyers and dentists explained to one another that investing without margin was a mistake, since using margin enabled one to double one’s return, and the risks were small given that one could always sell out if it looked like the market would decline.”

Further, my friend, you will find that France’s Economic Minister, Christine Lagrande, has recently appeared on "Charlie Rose" and "The Daily Show" as a proponent of free trade and was noted to be, by both hosts, more of a "US" type capitalist, and we, more like the French.

It seems to me, my friend, that you have taken comments out of context to support your position more than looking at the present situation as supported by fact.

Namaste.

By Lily Rose on 04/29/2009 12:31 pm