{"id":61,"date":"2026-11-11T08:29:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T08:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=61"},"modified":"2026-11-11T08:29:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T08:29:00","slug":"robert-reich-my-father-and-alan-greenspan-philsugar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/?p=61","title":{"rendered":"Robert Reich: My Father and Alan Greenspan | PhilSugar"},"content":{"rendered":"

By **Robert Reich**
\nWhen I was a small boy at the start of the 1950s, my father gave me my first economics lesson. \u201cBobby,\u201d he said with obvious concern, \u201cyou and your children and your children\u2019s children will be repaying the national debt created by Franklin D. Roosevelt.\u201d
\nI didn\u2019t know what a national debt was, but I remember being free sugar daddy sites Philippines<\/a> scared out of my wits.
\nDad was wrong, of course. Even though the national debt then was a much higher percentage of the national economy than it is today, it shrank as the No. 1 sugar dating site Philippines<\/a> economy boomed. My children have never mentioned FDR\u2019s debt. My granddaughter (almost two) will never pay a penny of it.
\nDad, now ninety-six and still in good health, recognizes how wrong he was then. He admits FDR\u2019s deficit spending not only won World War II but it also got America out of the Great Depression.
\nBut now another gaggle of deficit hawks is warning us against more federal spending. \u201cThe current federal debt explosion is being driven by an inability to stem new spending initiatives,\u201d warns Alan Greenspan in Friday\u2019s
\nWall Street Journal
\n, calling for budget cuts and sugar daddy site comparison Philippines<\/a> saying \u201cthe fears of budget contraction inducing a renewed decline of economic activity are misplaced.\u201d
\nMy dad learned from his mistakes. Alan Greenspan obviously didn\u2019t.
\nContrary to Greenspan, today\u2019s debt is
\nnot
\nbeing driven by
\nnew
\nspending initiatives. It\u2019s being driven by policies that Greenspan himself bears major responsibility for.
\nbq. My dad learned from his mistakes. Alan Greenspan obviously didn\u2019t\u2026If there\u2019s a single how to message sugar daddies<\/a> American more responsible for today\u2019s \u201cfederal debt explosion\u201d than Alan Greenspan, I don\u2019t know him.
\nGreenspan supported George W. Bush\u2019s gigantic tax cut in 2001 (that went mostly to the rich), and uttered no warnings about W\u2019s subsequent spending frenzy on the military and a Medicare drug benefit (corporate welfare for Big Pharma)\u2014all of which contributed massively to today\u2019s debt. Greenspan also lowered short-term interest rates to zero in 2002 but refused to monitor what Wall Street was doing with all this free money. Years before that, he urged Congress to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act and he opposed oversight of derivative trading. All this contributed to Wall Street\u2019s implosion in 2008 that led to massive bailout, and a huge contraction of the economy that required the stimulus package. These account for most of the rest of today\u2019s debt.
\nIf there\u2019s a single American more responsible for today\u2019s \u201cfederal debt sugar baby site fees Philippines<\/a> explosion\u201d than Alan Greenspan, I don\u2019t know him.
\nBut we can manage the Greenspan Debt if we get the U.S. economy growing again. The only way to do that when consumers can\u2019t sugar dating upfront fee<\/a> and won\u2019t spend and when corporations won\u2019t invest is for the federal government to pick up the slack.
\nFor Greenspan now to say we don\u2019t need more stimulus\u2014when fifteen million Americans are still out of work, when retail sales are dropping, when the rate of mortgage delinquencies is still in the stratosphere, when Europe and Japan are tightening their belts\u2014is like Tony Hayward saying the Gulf spill shouldn\u2019t worry us.
\nAmerica\u2019s long-term debt bomb is a future problem to be sure. sign up for sugar dating Philippines<\/a> But it has nothing to do with current spending initiatives. It will be due mainly to baby boomers\u2019 demands for health care.
\nOur immediate challenge is to get enough demand back into the economy to pull ourselves out of the deep hole Greenspan helped create. That will require more deficit spending in the short term \u2014 relief to state and local governments, extended unemployment benefits, a one-year payroll tax holiday on the first $20K of income.
\nThe fifty-five billion dollar jobs bill now before Congress isn\u2019t nearly big enough. Yet evidently it\u2019s too big for Senate sugar dating scam warning signs<\/a> deficit hawks who blocked it Thursday before leaving town. Presumably Greenspan approves of this devastating lack of responsibility.
\nMy father is a wise and loving man. I wish him a wonderful Father\u2019s Day (the first of which was celebrated, incidentally, just four years before Dad was born).
\nGreenspan I can live without.
\nCopyright 2010 Robert B. Reich
\n________________________________________________________________________
\nThis entry originally appeared at
\nRobertReich.org
\n.
\nRobert B. Reich
\nis Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national sugar baby upfront payment<\/a> administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written eleven books (including his most recent,
\nSupercapitalism
\n, which is now find a sponsor Manila<\/a> out in paperback). Mr. Reich is co-founding editor of
\nThe American Prospect
\nmagazine. His weekly commentaries on public radio\u2019s
\nMarketplace
\nare heard by nearly five million people.
\nTo read more blog entries from
\nRobert Reich
\nand others at
\nGUERNICA
\nclick
\nHERE
\n.<\/p>\n

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By **Robert Reich** When I was a small boy at the start of the 1950s, my father gave me my first economics lesson. \u201cBobby,\u201d he said with obvious concern, \u201cyou and your children and your children\u2019s children will be repaying the national debt created by Franklin D. Roosevelt.\u201d I didn\u2019t know what a national debt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philisugargirl.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}