Paul Craig Roberts Sizes-up Economy, US Election, TPP, Empire, Obamacare and other Domestic Policy Agendas

TND Editor’s Note:  Mainstream media cares little about what Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has to say.  But they care in Sir Lanka.  Go figure.

TND Interview Spotlight:  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.

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Related: Paul Craig Roberts: The Establishment Can’t Control Trump Or Sanders – Shadow Of Truth