Truthdigger of the Week: Greg Palast

Truthdigger of the Week: Greg Palast

By Alexander Reed Kelly
The man President Obama and every corporate banker in the nation favored as the next chair of the Federal Reserve unceremoniously withdrew his name from consideration for the post Sept. 15 after cries of opposition from members of the Democratic Party and others in Congress.
“I have reluctantly concluded that any possible confirmation process for me would be acrimonious and would not serve the interest of the Federal Reserve, the Administration, or ultimately, the interests of the nation’s ongoing economic recovery,” Lawrence Summers, Obama’s former economics czar, wrote in a letter confirming his decision to the president.
Summers is undeniably right. More direction from the man whose performance in Clinton’s Treasury department helped create the 2008 economic crisis and the ongoing horrors that followed runs directly against the interests of all Americans, including those in the ruling and owning class. But I and many others were looking forward to a hearing to confirm Summers. Why? Because as the Indian news service Niti Central may have been the first to point out, Summers could have been asked to publicly explain the meaning of a secret 1997 Treasury memo (viewable here) reminding him to pick up a phone and reassure the most powerful CEOs in the world that plans to tear apart laws protecting the economies of 156 nations from predatory bankers were going ahead as scheduled.
That document lit up the Web when investigative reporter Greg Palast spotlighted it in his column in Vice magazine in mid-August. Palast, who acquired the document from an unnamed source, had published it before—in his 2011 book “Vultures’ Picnic” and elsewhere—but Summers’ nomination earlier this year provided an urgent opportunity to give the public another look at the memo and the nature of the man it exposed. More at link

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdigger_of_the_week_greg_palast_20130921/