An Interview with Paul Craig Roberts
Talk to Sri Lanka Guardian Paul Craig Roberts
( March 24, 2016, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) Paul Craig Roberts, former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, talks to the Sri Lanka Guardianabout supply-side economics, US foreign policy, the Obama administration, the dangers of TPP, the Sri Lankan economy and the upcoming US election
Here are some excerpts of the interview:
Nilantha Ilangamuwa (NI): Dr. Roberts, Welcome to the Sri Lanka Guardian. You were United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under President Reagan in the early 1980s. This was the time that neo-liberal economic policies began to dominate the world market. You yourself were awarded the US Treasury’s Meritorious Service Award for “outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy. But your recent analyses express strong opposition to these policies, in which you played a leading role in developing. May we have your take on this?
Paul Craig Roberts (PCR): The Reagan administration introduced supply-side economics as a new policy in order to cure stagflation, the simultaneous rise of inflation and unemployment. Supply-side economics is not neoliberal economics. Supply-side economics corrected one of the many mistakes made by neoliberal economics. As a high official in Reagan’s government, I was under constant attack by neoliberal economists who opposed Reagan’s economic policy. The supply-side policy that I introduced cured the stagflation, and the US economy resumed growing without having to pay for the growth in rising rates of inflation.
Today the successful supply-side policy has been abandoned. Policymakers at the Federal Reserve (the central bank) and at the US Treasury have returned to the failed neoliberal policy. They say that they are trying to restart inflation in order to revive the economy. In other words, policymakers have returned to the neoliberal view that economic growth requires the stimulus of inflation.
Reagan was determined to overcome stagflation in order to have the economic resources to threaten the Soviet Union with an arms race unless the Soviets agreed to end the Cold War.
Reagan believed, correctly, that the Soviet economy was in such bad shape that the Soviets could not afford a new arms race. Reagan was opposed to what he called “those awful nuclear weapons.” He wanted to remove them as a threat to life on earth. The reason I received the Meritorious Service Award is because the economic policy that I introduced succeeded, and the economic success allowed Reagan to achieve with Gorbachev the end of the dangerous Cold War.
NI: Since the end of the Cold War much has changed in US foreign policy. Sri Lanka maintains a high degree of diplomatic relations with the United States of America, and the Obama administration is generally well-considered. What is your take on the Obama administration’s record after eight years?
PCR: You asked me to evaluate the Obama regime. Obama was chosen to be president by the powerful private interest groups who rule the US, because he was a neophyte with little experience of Washington and, therefore, easy to control. The less a president knows, the easier it is to control him. Despite any good intentions Obama might have had, Obama knew very little and did not know enough independent thinkers to staff his administration. It was staffed for him by Wall Street and the neoconservatives, essentially warmongers who proclaim American hegemony over the world.
As Mike Lofgren, a member of the US Congress staff for 28 years writes in his recently published book, The Deep State, “Obama, like any president, is literally a captive of the people who brief him on secret intelligence.”
