Greider on Globalization: Can the US Afford It?

I've long admired William Greider's writings on economics. In debates about the effects of globalization, for example, he's consistently argued that the so-called free market is not actually free, if by that term one means that trade is unregulated.
Greider examines disturbing trends and asks the difficult questions that many people, and far too many of our journalists and our politicians, choose to ignore.

In this op-ed piece, cleverly titled "America's Truth Deficit," Greider draws a parallel between US leaders' failure to address "perennial trade deficits" with Soviet leaders' refusal to reform the USSR's failing economic system:

DURING the cold war, as the Soviet economic system slowly unraveled, internal reform was impossible because highly placed officials who recognized the systemic disorders could not talk about them honestly. The United States is now in an equivalent predicament. Its weakening position in the global trading system is obvious and ominous, yet leaders in politics, business, finance and the news media are not willing to discuss candidly what is happening and why. Instead, they recycle the usual bromides about the benefits of free trade and assurances that everything will work out for the best.

Much like Soviet leaders, the American establishment is enthralled by utopian convictions - the market orthodoxy of free trade globalization. The United States is heading for yet another record trade deficit in 2005, possibly 25 percent larger than last year's. Our economy's international debt position - accumulated from many years of tolerating larger and larger trade deficits - began compounding ferociously in the last five years. Our net foreign indebtedness is now more than 25 percent of gross domestic product and at the current pace will reach 50 percent in four or five years.