In the first three segments of this six part interview we've heard Jane D'Arista, author of The Evolution of U.S. Finance: Federal Reserve Monetary Policy: 1915-1935 and research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts at Amherst, talk with Paul Jay about the end of the American consumerism as the driving 'engine' of the global economy, and about the decades long development of the offshoring of labor and the companies that have been doing that attempting to continue profiting by selling their goods back into a US market with steadily declining disposable income - - - finally arriving at the point where massive government bailouts of the financial sector have been used to keep the illusion of a prosperous economy afloat at the expense of the average person, but that US workers wages are too low and there is no longer the cheap credit available to keep the system going that has been enabling people to live the 'American Dream' through debt, and why other countries are both unlikely and unwilling to take the place of the US as that importer of last resort that is needed to keep the illusion alive.

In this fourth segment D'Arista goes further in her conversation with Jay to give us the broad outlines of a solution she proposes to help reorganize the US and global economies - "an investment fund...in which you can attract, also, not only the savings that end up in central banks and government treasuries around the world, but the private savings, the important private savings, which are pension funds, not only in the US and other developed countries, but also in emerging market countries where pension funds are growing like crazy and they have no place to put them", an alternative in a world where "politicians in the US, but certainly not only the US, in much of the world—are so entwined with the finance sector that the politics is pretty much as parasitical as the banks"


Real News Network - April 20, 2010
Can US dollar remain world's currency? Pt.4
D'Arista: The world wants a new reserve currency - would be good for Americans too
Transcript here
Part 1 of this interview is here.
Part 2 is here.
Part 3 is here.
All four parts are under the tag Jane D'Arista.

So far in the first two segments of this six part interview we've heard Jane D'Arista, author of The Evolution of U.S. Finance: Federal Reserve Monetary Policy: 1915-1935 and research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts at Amherst, talk with Paul Jay about the end of the American consumerism as the driving 'engine' of the global economy, and about the decades long development of the offshoring of labor and the companies that have been doing that attempting to continue profiting by selling their goods back into a US market with steadily declining disposable income, finally arriving at the point where massive government bailouts of the financial sector have been used to keep the illusion of a prosperous economy afloat at the expense of the average person.

In this third segment D'Arista goes further in her conversation with Jay to explain why and how the global economic system depends on the US as importer of last resort but that US workers wages are too low and there is no longer the cheap credit available to keep the system going that has been enabling people to live the 'American Dream' through debt, and why other countries are both unlikely and unwilling to take the place of the US as that importer of last resort that is needed to keep the illusion alive.


Real News Network - April 16, 2010
Can US dollar remain world's currency? Pt.3
Jane D'Arista: System depends on US as importer of last resort but wages too low and credit not there
Transcript here
Part 1 of this interview is here.
Part 2 is here.

Yesterday in the first segment of this interview we heard Jane D'Arista, author of The Evolution of U.S. Finance: Federal Reserve Monetary Policy: 1915-1935 and research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts at Amherst, talking with Paul Jay of The Real News Network about the fact that the global economy has lost the American consumer as the engine for the whole system.

Here in segment 2 D'Arista continues her conversation with Jay, talking about private capital looking for investment safety by abandoning the US Dollar to other things they think will better hold real value such as precious metals, oil, etc. and more about the history of how we got into the economic situation we are in today.

And about who benefits...


Real News Network - April 15, 2010
Can US dollar remain world's currency? Pt.2
Jane D'Arista: Big states will defend dollar, but private capital may move to precious metals and oil
Transcript here
Part 1 of this interview is here.
Part 3 is here.

           Read more... 

Jane D'Arista is a research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she also co-founded an Economists’ Committee for Financial Reform called SAFER, i.e. stable, accountable, efficient & fair reform.

She is also a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, "A nonpartisan think tank that seeks to broaden the public debate about strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy".

Jane served as a staff economist for the Banking and Commerce Committees of the U.S. House of Representatives, as a principal analyst in the international division of the Congressional Budget Office. Representing Americans for Financial Reform, she has given Congressional testimony at financial services hearings. She has lectured at the Boston University School of Law, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the University of Utah and the New School University and writes and lectures internationally.

Her publications include The Evolution of U.S. Finance: Federal Reserve Monetary Policy : 1915-1935, a two-volume history of U.S. monetary policy and financial regulation.

Here Jane talks with Paul Jay of the Real News in the first segment of a six part interview, and says now that the US dollar as the reserve currency of all international transactions...

"[H]as played out its ability to perform the function that was in place before, namely, the US was the banker to the world and was in effect doing the transactions that allowed the global trade and investment regime to work. Now that we are so much in debt, and that it began [...] with the Reagan administration and has run up precipitously over time, we are now at historic levels in terms of debt.

And the household sector in this country, which we shifted to when in the Clinton administration we took down the federal deficit, the household sector has played out. [U]nemployment is high. People are losing their houses. They cannot borrow money to continue to buy.

And the whole global system came to be based on the idea that the American consumer was the engine for the global economy, and it is no longer."

Real News Network - April 14, 2010
Can the US dollar collapse?
D'Arista: US dollar as world's reserve currency is great if you own a bank; not much good for Main St.
Full transcript here
Part 2 of this interview is here.
Part 3 is here.