Paul Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939, in Atlanta, Georgia) is an economist and a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as the "Father of Reaganomics". He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. He is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology and he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He was a post-graduate at the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the United States.[1] His writings frequently appear on OpEdNews.com, Antiwar.com, VDARE.com. Lew Rockwell's web site, CounterPunch, and the American Free Press.
BiographyRoberts has been a critic of both Democratic and Republican administrations. He has authored or coauthored eight books, contributed chapters to numerous books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship. He has testified before congressional committees on 30 occasions on issues of economic policy. He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Roberts served on the congressional staff, where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy. In 1987 the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor on March 20, 1987. The French Minister of Economics and Finance, Edouard Balladur, came from France to present the medal to Roberts at a ceremony at the French Ambassador's residence in Washington, D.C. President Reagan sent OMB Director Jim Miller to the ceremony with a letter of congratulation. Roberts opposed the Iraq War and writes frequently on the subject. On May 18, 2005, in response to the publication of the "Downing Street memo," Roberts wrote an article calling for Bush's impeachment for lying to Congress about the case for war. Roberts is also a critic of a potential Bush administration attack on Iran. In an August 15, 2005 article, he states "Bush...dismisses all facts and assurances and is willing to attack Iran based on nothing but Israel's paranoia." Although his criticisms of Bush often seem to align him with the political left, Roberts continues to praise Ronald Reagan and to endorse many of Reagan's policies, arguing that "true conservatives" were the "first victims" of the neoconized Bush administration.[2] He has said that many supporters of George W. Bush "are brownshirts with the same low intelligence and morals as Hitler's enthusiastic supporters."[3]
Recent viewsBush Neocons pushing towards Nuclear Armageddon in the next two or three yearsIn an interview on August 27, 2008 on Alex Jones Radio broadcast, Paul Craig Roberts claims Bush neocons are leading the United States into a nuclear confrontation with Russia over the situation in Georgia and South Ossetia. Roberts gives the conflict “almost total certainty if John McCain gets in office… this is not something that will happen in the next fifty years, it’s going to happen in the next two or three years.” Bush Neocons pushing towards Nuclear Armageddon in the next two or three years. August 27, 2008 September 11, 2001 attacksOf the 9/11 Commission Report he wrote in 2006, "One would think that if the report could stand analysis, there would not be a taboo against calling attention to the inadequacy of its explanations." (see Criticisms of the 9/11 Commission Report). He has reported what he says are findings by experts that conclude there is a large energy deficit in the official account of the collapse of the three WTC buildings, and says that this deficit remains unexplained. Roberts, a supply-side economist, comments on the "scientific impossibility" of the official explanation for the events on 9/11 and says those engineers and physicists who accept this theory are wrong. On August 18, 2006, he wrote:
On the (back) cover of Debunking 9/11 Debunking (2007) he is quoted:
He also was critical of a new Executive Order, released July 17, allowing the White House to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies and giving the government expanded police powers to exercise control in the country. "When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order], there's no check to it. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. The American people don't really understand the danger that they face." Roberts adding that the so-called neoconservatives intended to use a renewal of the fight against terrorism to rally the American people around the fading Republican Party. "The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," he said. "You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda is not going to do it, it is going to be orchestrated." Roberts suggested that in the absence of a massive popular outcry, only the federal bureaucracy and perhaps the military could put constraints on Bush's current drive for a fully-fledged dictatorship. "They may have had enough. They may not go along with it," he said.[5] The radio interview was a follow-up to Robert's latest column, in which he warned that "unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the U.S. could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran."[6] National media
Society"If I had time to research my writings over the past 30 years, I could find examples of partisan articles in behalf of Republicans and against Democrats. However, political partisanship is not the corpus of my writings. I had a 16-year stint as Business Week's first outside columnist, despite hostility within the magazine and from the editor's New York social set, because the editor regarded me as the most trenchant critic of the George H.W. Bush administration in the business. The White House felt the same way and lobbied to have me removed from the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies... In their hatred of "the rich," the left-wing overlooks that in the 20th century the rich were the class most persecuted by government. The class genocide of the 20th century is the greatest genocide in history."[9] Outsourcing jobsRoberts has testified before the US–China Commission and written many articles pointing out that the offshoring of high productivity, high value-added jobs in manufacturing and professional services is dismantling the ladders of upward mobility that made the U.S. an opportunity society. War on DrugsThough Roberts worked for the Reagan administration, which implemented a "zero tolerance" and "Just Say No" policy on illegal drugs and increased spending to combat drugs, in 2007, he penned an article criticizing the excess of the War on Drugs which he termed the "militarization of local police".[10] Republican PartyRoberts is seriously dismayed by what he considers the disregard of the Republican Party for the US constitution. He has even voiced his regret that he ever worked for it, avowing that, had he known what it would become, he would never have contributed to the Reagan Revolution.[11] Published worksBooks
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