Bill Moyers Journal
BILL MOYERS: You call us an "empire of consumption."
ANDREW BACEVICH: I didn't create that phrase. It's a phrase drawn from a book by a wonderful historian at Harvard University, Charles Maier, and the point he makes in his very important book is that, if we think of the United States at the apex of American power, which I would say would be the immediate post World War Two period, through the Eisenhower years, into the Kennedy years. We made what the world wanted. They wanted our cars. We exported our television sets, our refrigerators - we were the world's manufacturing base. He called it an "empire of production."
BILL MOYERS: Right.
ANDREW BACEVICH: Sometime around the 1960s there was a tipping point, when the "empire of production" began to become the "empire of consumption." When the cars started to be produced elsewhere, and the television sets, and the socks, and everything else. And what we ended up with was the American people becoming consumers rather than producers.
BILL MOYERS: And you say this has produced a condition of profound dependency, to the extent, and I'm quoting you, "Americans are no longer masters of their own fate."
ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, they're not. I mean, the current debt to the Chinese government grows day by day. Why? Well, because of the negative trade balance. Our negative trade balance with the world is something in the order of $800 billion per year. That's $800 billion of stuff that we buy, so that we can consume, that is $800 billion greater than the amount of stuff that we sell to them. That's a big number. I mean, it's a big number even relative to the size of our economy.
Aug 16th
The Way of the World: Ron Suskind on How...
AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to some of the responses to your explosive allegations, like the former CIA director, George Tenet. He says, “The second nugget in the book involves a supposed order from the White House to me at the CIA to have my staff fabricate a letter connecting Iraq with Al Qa’ida and the attacks of 9/11. Suskind says that CIA was directed to get an Iraqi official to copy the bogus information in his own hand—and then cause it to be leaked to the media.
“There was no such order from the White House to me nor, to the best of my knowledge, was anyone from CIA ever involved in any such effort. […]
“The notion that I would suddenly reverse our stance and have created and planted false evidence that was contrary to our own beliefs is ridiculous.” Those, the words of George Tenet.
RON SUSKIND: The key line in there is the “to best of my recollection.” I mean, Tenet, of course, has had problems up to now. I dealt with him a great deal on my last book, The One Percent Doctrine. The reason reporters don’t call George up to now is because he says essentially he doesn’t remember “slam dunk,” he doesn’t remember briefing the President before 9/11. I’ve known George for a long time. What I did hear is, I talked to the direct participants who actually executed, were involved in, the step-by-step of the process, and they testify on the record in the book. And I think people in the know, certainly in Washington, understand why George is the last man you want to call on something like this.
Aug 13th