Paul Craig Roberts

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Paul Craig Roberts : biography

April 3, 1939 –

US media

  • "Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a ‘de facto’ Ministry of Propaganda."
  • "The uniformity of the US media has become much more complete since the days of the cold war. During the 1990s, the US government permitted an unconscionable concentration of print and broadcast media that terminated the independence of the media. Today the US media is owned by 5 giant companies in which pro-Zionist Jews have disproportionate influence. More importantly, the values of the conglomerates reside in the broadcast licenses, which are granted by the government, and the corporations are run by corporate executives—not by journalists—whose eyes are on advertising revenues and the avoidance of controversy that might produce boycotts or upset advertisers and subscribers.", VDARE.com, 16 August 2006

Society

…I had a 16-year stint as Business Week’s first outside columnist, despite hostility within the magazine and from the editor’s New York social set, because the editor regarded me as the most trenchant critic of the George H.W. Bush administration in the business. The White House felt the same way and lobbied to have me removed from the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies… In their hatred of ‘the rich,’ the left-wing overlooks that in the 20th century the rich were the class most persecuted by government. The class genocide of the 20th century is the greatest genocide in history.His reference is to what he considered "class genocide" in the widespread massacres and deaths in the Soviet Union and Maoist China of people for being members of the wrong class.

Outsourcing jobs

Roberts testified before the US–China Commission and has written many articles saying that the offshoring of high productivity, high value-added jobs in manufacturing and professional services is dismantling the ladders of upward mobility that made the U.S. an opportunity society. He has opposed Global labor arbitrage. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez-Faire Capitalism and the Economic Erosion of the West (2012), has been translated into German and Chinese. He critiques and reformulates large areas of economic theory.

War on drugs

Roberts worked for the Reagan administration, which implemented a "zero tolerance" and "Just Say No" policy on illegal drugs and increased spending to combat drugs. In 2007, he published an article on the web site VDare.com criticizing the excess of the War on Drugs, which he said had resulted in the "militarization of local police".Paul Craig Roberts, , VDare

War on Terror

Roberts asked "Is the War on Terror a Hoax", and said that it has "killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans of millions of Muslims in six countries". Roberts called the attacks "naked aggression" on civilian populations and infrastructure which "constitute war crimes.".

Republican Party

Roberts is strongly opposed to what he considers the Republican Party’s disregard for the United States Constitution. He has voiced his regret that he ever worked for it, avowing that, had he known what it would become, he would never have contributed to the Reagan Revolution., CounterPunch, 23 July 2008

American democracy and oligarchy

Roberts has been increasingly critical of what he deems as the lessening of democracy in the U.S. and other western countries. In a 2011 interview, he said oligarchs are running these nations:

The west prides itself that it is the standard for the world, that it is a democracy. But nowhere do you see democratic outcomes: not in Greece, not in Ireland, not in the UK, not here, the outcomes are always to punish the innocent and reward the guilty. And that’s what the Greeks are in the streets, protesting. We see this all over the west. There is no democracy, there are oligarchies, some of these smaller European countries are not even run by their own governments, they are run by Wall Street… There is probably more democracy in China than there is in the west. Revolution is the only answer… We are confronted with a curious situation. Throughout the west we think we have democracy, we hold ourselves up high, we demonize China, we talk about the mafia state of Russia, we talk about the Arabs and so on, but where is the democracy here?

Cessation and resumption of journalism

On March 26, 2010, Roberts announced he was "signing off" as a journalist in a column titled "Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It"."Good-Bye: Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It," counterpunch.org March 24, 2010 But, after receiving thousands of emails demanding that he continue to write, two months later he resumed writing for publication.

In January 2012, his website, www.paulcraigroberts.org, was put on the Internet. It includes an archive of a decade of his 21st-century columns.

Financial crisis and the Federal Reserve

Roberts has argued that the 2012 Libor scandal completes the picture of public and private financial institutions manipulating interest rates in order to prop up the prices of bonds and other fixed income instruments, and that “the motives of the Fed, Bank of England, US and UK banks are aligned, their policies mutually reinforcing and beneficial. The Libor fixing is another indication of this collusion.” Roberts recommends stricter bank regulation, and a profound reform of the Federal Reserve System.