Biden Blurring Almost Everything – Thomas Ferguson

https://vimeo.com/450533475 The Biden campaign is trying to appeal to supporters of a Green New Deal and the finance sector at the same time. He's promising an FDR style New Deal at a time when Wall St. is more powerful than ever. Thomas Ferguson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast. Transcript Paul JayHi, I'm Paul Jay, and welcome to the Analysis.news podcast.On Thursday, Joe Biden accepted the Democratic Party's nomination for president and talked about theneed for a New Deal, drawing on the spirit of Roosevelt. This is the same Biden that for years wasconsidered a fiscal conservative. And in The New York Times on Friday, an article, titled, "We HaveCrossed the Line Debt Hawks Warned Us About for Decades', there's a quote from Olivier Blanchard, asenior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former chief economist of theInternational Monetary Fund. Here's the quote," At this stage, I think, nobody is very worried aboutdebt. It’s clear that we can probably go where we are going, which is debt ratios above 100 percent inmany countries. And that’s not the end of the world," Blanchard said.Now, for those that don't follow these things, the Peterson Institute has been the mecca of debt hawks,warning of the dangers of government debt and demanding draconian austerity policies for years. Sowhy the change of tune? And how long will this embrace of Keynesian stimulus last? Now joining us isour friend Thomas Ferguson, a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. Thanksfor joining us, Tom. Tom FergusonHi there. Well, I'm glad to be here even in the middle of a covered epidemic. Paul JayWell, let's start with Biden. He's promising this FDR-ish economic style presidency, or at least he kind ofhints at that. Is that really what he's proposing? And if he is, can he deliver? Tom FergusonThe short, blunt answer is that the Biden campaign is quite deliberately blurring almost everything itsays because it's having to ride two horses, at once. And we might as well walk through the Blanchardand others, quotations and comments and sort of set this discussion up a bit. And the question is about,as you said, fiscal policy, it's also about monetary policy. And so, look, let's go back to the politicalcontext first, I think, which was there was a powerful movement on the left-wing of the DemocraticParty. It didn't do as well as it hoped, but it did rather well. And there I would count, not only Sanders,but Warren I think most of the time, clearly belonged to that. But the point to grasp here is that theyhad lost before the pandemic hit, just before it. And that disastrous sequence, first in South Carolina andthen the whole South and Western primaries, in which Biden buried Sanders and in which the SouthCarolina Democrats and others, Black Democrats were quite clearly enlisted in Congress to beat backthe Sanders challenge.Since the establishment of the Democratic Party had the whole ball game one before the pandemic, andthen the next thing to sort of grasp is, OK, how did the pandemic change this? And there I think the answer is straightforward. The main point, especially of the Sanders campaign, about the importance ofMedicare for all, not linked to a job, became overwhelmingly important. So did the general problem ofwage rises that he is focused on the war, and you could see echoes of that in the Warren campaign.Luckily, most of the main issues of, especially, the Sanders campaign, look pretty good in the pandemic.And now you're getting a lot of desperate people, particularly as the US fell over the fiscal cliff at theend of July. That is the fiscal cliff here being the drop in spending that is now happening because of thefailure to put through another stimulus package.