Nation Columnist William Greider to Discuss "Conservative Crack-Up"

"The Conservative Crack-Up" is the title of this year's William E. Weiss Lecture in Economics at Skidmore, to be delivered Tuesday, May 2, by William Greider, national affairs correspondent for The Nation. Free and open to the public, the talk will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Davis Auditorium of Palamountain Hall.

According to Greider, "The marketplace doctrine inspired by Friedman and Hayek and brought to power by Republican ascendancy has failed to produce a stable, widely shared prosperity. Roughly speaking, it lifts only half the boats. It manages to sustain growth by piling up more debt. Republicans are in a corner and have no easy way out.

"As this great shift unfolds, the way is open for alternative ideas and eventually a new governing order. We cannot yet see the outlines of what replaces the market ideology, but we can begin to talk about the ideas. Indeed, we have an obligation to do so. Reform's basic objective should be to restore this fundamental principle: The economy exists to support society and people, not the other way around." In his most recent book, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy (Simon & Schuster, 2003), Greider describes why American capitalism produces so much human discontent and social injury as well as abundance. He writes that Americans exert influence to change the economic system's operating values and power structure, to disarm capitalism's destructive collisions and its collateral consequences for people and the nation.

For more than 40 years, Greider has been a reporter (newspapers, magazines, TV) and author. He is a former assistant managing editor for national news at the Washington Post, where he also worked as a national correspondent and Sunday columnist. He started his journalism career at the Wheaton Daily Journal in Wheaton, Ill., and later worked at the Louisville Times in Louisville, Ky., before joining the Post, where he spent 15 years. From the early 1980s until 1999, he was a columnist and feature writer at Rolling Stone, which he left to join The Nation.

In addition to The Soul of Capitalism, Greider's books include Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace (PublicAffairs, 1998); One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (Simon & Schuster, 1997); Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy (Simon & Schuster, 1991); Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (Simon & Schuster, 1987); and The Education of David Stockman and Other Americans (Dutton, 1982). The William E. Weiss Lecture in Economics at Skidmore is made possible with the assistance of former Trustee Arturo Peralta-Ramos III, a member of the Skidmore's Class of 1974. Named in honor of Peralta-Ramos's stepfather, William Weiss, the lecture series brings to campus speakers with special insight into contemporary economic issues.