Thomas Friedman: This Isn't Your Grandma's Recession

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/03/05/Thomas_Friedmans_Obama_Administration_Update

Author and journalist Thomas Friedman comments on the enormous depth of the financial crisis. "You put that much leverage, on that much globalization and wrap it in that much complexity and start it in America, and I tell you...Grandma never saw this before," says Friedman.

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When Thomas Friedman was at Book Passage last fall to talk about Hot, Flat and Crowded, he agreed to return in the spring to discuss how environmental issues were being dealt with in the new administration.

He contends that the green revolution will be the biggest innovation project in American history. Friedman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the N.Y. Times and the author of The World is Flat. - Book Passage Bookstore

Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board. Friedman was bureau chief for The Times in Beirut and Jerusalem before writing, From Beirut to Jerusalem, which won the National Book Award for non-fiction. His book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree won the 2000 Overseas Press Club award for best nonfiction book on foreign policy. His latest work, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century, won the inaugural Goldman Sachs/Financial Times Business Book of the Year award. He has a B.A. in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University and a Master of Philosophy degree in Modern Middle East studies from Oxford.

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[09geauxtigers]

I read today that there is expected to be another wave of massive layoffs coming. Unemployment will over 10% soon. This is not going away anytime soon. It's not just the economy that is responsible, but, what isn't mentioned that often is that many of these jobs are being replaced by technology. We were warned decades ago that people needed to get training and education in tech, management, business, engineering, etc. Blue collar jobs are a thing of the past.

[Zendout1]

Friedman simply doesn't know whats going on--so the sky is falling

Have a little faith in the wise men

There'll be some pain but when its over,

the country won't be broken anymore

what we need is a good dose of reality and I suspect we're about to get it

Pretty refreshing if you ask me

[szatmar666]

@lyndonb u r right on the money! This could be reversed in 6 months by simply taxing the right people and going back to the Bretton Woods system of capital controls and exchange rates.

[szatmar666]

Friedman is the archetypal BS artist, apparatchik for the corrupt system, a master of confusion and disinformation. Of course WE DO KNOW when and how this started, it's not rocket science. It started with the Nixon Shock in 1971 when Bretton Woods was dismantled and international capital controls went out the window and continued in 1982 when the 1st time since WW2 the US grew its debt faster than its GDP and it does it EVERY year since then except a few years in the 90s: it's NOT COMPLICATED!

[flyoverjoe]

@bobzilla211 I don't know if you've already received this suggestion, but here it goes anyway. Please read, "The Housing Boom and Bust," by Thomas Sowell. Just pick it up at the library. It's fairly short, easy to read, and very logical. I don't know, but it might change your perception a little.

[bapyou]

This asshole makes $60,000 per hour to speak publicly.

As the election of George W. Bush represents the end of the American nation, so does Thomas Friedman represent the complete and entire loss of credibility for the NYT. He's a buffoon and an idiot.

[DrCruel]

@bobzilla211 I don't know where you've been. The business people I knew lost money from that government-aided Wall Street taking - and lots of it.

Seriously, go educate yourself. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aren't "capitalist conspiracies". And why didn't regulators at the SEC see the oncoming crisis? Because they did - and profited considerably from it. Don't you wonder where all those government trillions disappear to?

Try to think outside of the Leftist box - it makes a lot more sense.

[bobzilla211]

@DrCruel oh yeah wall street must have really hated making all that money off the 'socialist' housing bubble.

seriously, go educate yourself - this recession was not caused by 'socialism'.

why did it strike most in the most financialised, free market economies - the UK, iceland, the US? because they were the most exposed to risk. why? to get a competitive edge and chase profits.

why did regulators fail to see the crisis? because they assumed the market would self-regulate for risk.

[DrCruel]

@bobzilla211 Machine politicians came up with the idea of "affordable housing" - and forced it on the states with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, sometimes in the face of considerable resistance (such as in Georgia).

If "capitalists" were responsible, tehy were Tammany Hall style capitalists like Barney Frank.

[bobzilla211]

@DrCruel of course the PRC are 'leftist' but there's nothing political about their economic rise either way, its a matter of pragmatism.

and yes, 'capitalists' did come up with that idea, just as 'capitalists' profited from it - on wall street, in estate agencies and banks. the poor are irrelevant and were barely helped by the boom - its a matter of america and britain stumbling across this way of artificially inflating their economies and being naive enough to think it could last forever.