A Bipartisan Ripoff

ROBERT SCHEER
Presents his new book
The Great American Stickup

How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street

Editor-in-Chief, Truthdig.com, 2010 Best Political Blog Webby Award Winner // Former LA Times Columnist & National Correspondent // Senior Lecturer at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication

Saturday, September 11, 7:30 PM
Unitarian Universalist Church
505 E. Charleston Road, Palo Alto
$7 ~ $15 suggested donation // Wheelchair accessible
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Presented by Peninsula Peace and Justice Center www.PeaceandJustice.org

From a legendary journalist, this is a muckraking expose of the bipartisan origins of the greatest financial scandal. The great banking meltdown of 2008 has largely been described by bankers, politicians and the mass media as unexpected in its severity and the result of complex investment instruments that are exceedingly difficult if not impossible to penetrate. Robert Scheer, who has been covering power and corruption for two decades as a reporter and columnist for the Los Angeles Times and as a founder of Truthdig.com, argues that there is nothing murky or even surprising about the meltdown. In The Great American Stick-Up, Scheer revisits those years of business lobbying when the politicians of both parties rolled over for the banks, in order to show that this fiasco could have been anticipated and that there are culprits responsible that should be named and who continue to wield enormous power over our lives.

Scheer particularly angles in on a bipartisan grouping who have played a formative role in shaping this disaster: the ultra power couple of Phil and Wendy Gramm, whose roles in the private sector and government have pushed for the wholesale deregulation of the banking sector for two decades, two former leaders of Goldman Sachs, Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson, and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. This group provides a framework to understand the web of moneyed influence that threatens our future. It is not a tale about the exceptional misuse of power but rather a sobering revelation of business as usual.

"Clinton signed off on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which categorically exempted derivatives from any existing law or regulatory body. It was that exemption that freed Goldman Sachs and others on Wall Street to run wild in packaging collateralized debt obligations ... which turned people’s homes into nothing more than gambling chips. The more suckers to be conned into those mortgage obligations, the better for the financial casino—until it had to be saved by taxpayers from spiraling completely out of control." ~ Robert Scheer, Goldman Plays, We Pay, Truthdig.com

Robert Scheer has built a reputation for strong social and political writing over his 30 years as a journalist. His columns appear in newspapers across the country, and his in-depth interviews have made headlines.

Between 1964 and 1969 he was Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. From 1976 to 1993 he served as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, writing on diverse topics such as the Soviet Union, arms control, national politics and the military. In 1993 he launched a nationally syndicated column based at the Los Angeles Times, where he was named a contributing editor.  That column ran weekly for the next 12 years and is now based at Truthdig.

Scheer can be heard on the political radio program “Left, Right and Center” on KCRW (heard locally on KALW at 7:00 PM on Fridays).  He has written eight books, including “Thinking Tuna Fish, Talking Death: Essays on the Pornography of Power”; “With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War” and “America After Nixon: The Age of Multinationals;” with his son Christopher and Lakshmi Chaudhry, “The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us about Iraq;” and “Playing President: “My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I and Clinton—and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush.” Most recently, he wrote “The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.”

Peninsula Peace and Justice Center