Q&A: WILLIAM GREIDER, Correspondent & Author (Part 2 of 2)

Written on February 6th, 2009

 

Aired 02/05/09 Part 2 of 2

Now National Affairs Correspondent for the Nation, WILLIAM GREIDER has spent forty years examining how powerful institutions affect ordinary people. For 17 years he was the National Affairs Editor at Rolling Stone magazine, and is a former assistant managing editor at the Washington Post, where he worked for fifteen years as a national correspondent, editor and columnist. He is the author of national bestsellers ONE WORLD, READY OR NOT, SECRETS OF THE TEMPLE and WHO WILL TELL THE PEOPLE. Greider also served as a correspondent for six Frontline documentaries on PBS, including "Return to Beirut," which won an Emmy in 1985.

www.thenation.com

Q&A: WILLIAM GREIDER, Correspondent & Author (Part 1 of 2)

Written on February 6th, 2009

 

Aired 02/03/09 Part 1 of 2

I have been trying to book this week's guest every week since at least last September, and finally I got him. WILLIAM GREIDER has been right for so long about so many things that last fall I wanted his take on the emerging financial crisis and the prospects of Barack Obama's being elected. Once both of those things happened, I've wanted to talk with him about how we got here, what we need to do to deal with the crisis, and what a true progressive platform for turning things around would look like.

Now National Affairs Correspondent for the Nation, WILLIAM GREIDER has spent forty years examining how powerful institutions affect ordinary people. For 17 years he was the National Affairs Editor at Rolling Stone magazine, and is a former assistant managing editor at the Washington Post, where he worked for fifteen years as a national correspondent, editor and columnist. He is the author of national bestsellers ONE WORLD, READY OR NOT, SECRETS OF THE TEMPLE and WHO WILL TELL THE PEOPLE. Greider also served as a correspondent for six Frontline documentaries on PBS, including "Return to Beirut," which won an Emmy in 1985.

www.thenation.com

Q&A: NIALL FERGUSON, Columnist and Author

Written on January 29th, 2009

 

Aired 01/27/09

NIALL FERGUSON is Lawrence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, an op ed columnist for the LA Times, and the other of several books, the newest is THE ASCENT OF MONEY: A Financial History of the World.

In THE ASCENT OF MONEY, NIALL FERGUSON says that finance is the foundation of human progress, and that financial history is the essential back-story behind all history.

He explains how banks provided the material basis for the the Italian Renaissance, while the bond market was the decisive factor in conflicts from the Seven Years' War to the American Civil War. Ferguson points out the origins of the French Revolution in a stock market bubble, and shows how a financial revolution is propelling the world's most populous country from poverty to power in a single generation.

The single most important lesson of financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts - sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers - sooner or later greed flips into fear.

We'll discuss how history can be helpful at a moment like this. And, what can it tell us about our current crisis and the way out?

http://www.niallferguson.com