Chomsky on Geithner

Via the Real News:

One of many money quotes: "They're simply recycling the Bush-Paulson measures and changing them a little, but essentially the same idea: keep the institutional structure the same, try to kind of patch things up, bribe the banks and investors to help out, but avoid the measures that might get to the heart of the problem."

Comments

[NomadUK]

That's 'patch things up', not 'pass things up'.

Damn, Chomsky's getting old. We'll be left without him before long.

[John Caruso]

Thanks, fixed (I'd copied it straight from the Real News site).

We'll be left without him before long.

Yes, I can't imagine the world without him.

[Donald Johnson]

"Yes, I can't imagine the world without him."

Actually, one of his legacies, I think, is that he's inspired so many people in the leftwing blogosphere to do what he does. Ten years ago if you wanted to keep up with all the horrors of US foreign policy you could do so without reading Chomsky, but it would take a lot of work and insight to find the sources that would tell you what the NYT wasn't telling you. Chomsky functioned as a one man blogosphere. Now there's a lot of people doing what he spent decades doing and they can do it more easily than he could because of the internet. And that's better, because in the bad old days if you cited Noam in a mainstream forum invariably people would try to discredit his arguments by bringing up Pol Pot or Faurisson. That kind of distraction doesn't work well anymore, though people still try it, because so many people can make Chomskyite arguments about human rights and the press without needing to cite Noam and without having to get sucked into the stupid arguments about what he did or didn't say about Pol Pot.

Glenn Greenwald has his faults, but more than half the time he sounds a lot like Noam--I'd never have thought a semi-mainstream media outlet like Salon would publish someone like him on a regular basis.

[Jonathan Schwarz]

I can't imagine the world without him.

I wouldn't be surprised if the burning fires of Noamness keep him going for quite a while. Bertrand Russell lived to be 97, I think.

That said, unless he outlives us all, several friends and I are planning our own drunk, teary wake whenever he goes. You're all invited.

[NomadUK]

Well, unless you want to hold the wake in Oxford, I'll have to satisfy myself with lifting a pint in your direction on that sad day.

[BR]

It seems to me this interview finally displays signs of age.

He's just not as potent and cutting as he once was. We're watching it more out of respect than out of a need to get to the immediate best commentary. The stuff about alternatives, mutuals and cooperatives and so on, is good and basic, but not the incisive insight into the nature of the evil that we face right now.

Perhaps the interviewer is at fault.

Anyone now who interviews Chomsky should be carefully screened with a view to gaining the best and most important insights that are left to give.

Although having said that he makes some good points on the financial crisis, an area where he has been criticized for lack of understanding in the past.

I fear the world without him.

I think I'm getting more pessimistic and embittered as time goes on. What hope is there?

Idealism is a folly for the young, no?

[John Caruso]

BR: It seems to me this interview finally displays signs of age.

I've noticed those for some time, actually, but Chomsky a step slower still makes most people look like they're standing still.

This specific case isn't his bailiwick, though. And when I say that I don't intend to echo those "critics" of his who say he lacks some basic understanding of economics, which is absurd (they generally just mean that he hasn't been inculcated with the same doctrinal beliefs about economics that they have); I really do mean this specific case, which has its own special and arcane set of circumstances. I've heard few if any people who seemed to have it entirely in hand (if any such people exist), and I found Chomsky's observations as worthwhile as any others I've heard.

Donald: Chomsky functioned as a one man blogosphere.

Yes, I've thought that before as well, and you're right that it'll help that others are doing (or trying to do) the same thing. Still, thousands of competent musicians don't equal one Mozart.

(By the way, to be clear, I was speaking personally with my "can't imagine" statement—not talking about the analytic hole that will open up once we lose him.)