Virtual Summit

Deficit hysteria will reach a fever pitch this month, as the nation’s leading advocate of gutting Social Security and Medicare, Wall Street mogul Pete Peterson and his acolytes are hosting a heavily hyped “2010 Fiscal Summit.” To help counter their deficit propaganda, for the rest of this month Campaign for America’s Future will host our own Virtual Summit On Fiscal And Economic Responsibility. We’re reaching out to progressive bloggers and economists — who unlike Peterson, did not wreck the economy — and we’d love it if you would join us. Please email Bill Scher at bscher[at]ourfuture.org if you want to participate, and he’ll send you instructions how to post at the Virtual Summit. Why is it so important that we unite to counter the Peterson Fiscal Summit? The economy may have hit bottom, but unemployment remains at near double-digit levels, with almost 25 million people unemployed or under-employed. And yet on April 28 former President Bill Clinton, Citibank’s Robert Rubin, former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan, and others who helped wreck the economy are lending their names to Peter G. Peterson’s effort to shift the country’s focus from creating jobs to reducing the deficit – and cutting Social Security and Medicare. Millions of people face the loss of their jobs or their homes, and tens of millions of seen much of their life saving vanish as the financial crisis threw the country into deep recession. Repairing this damage and restoring the economy to healthy growth should be the top agenda for Washington policy makers. But no, that’s not the way Washington works. Instead of focusing on economic growth, the same people who brought on this entirely preventable disaster are now trying to get the country to focus on the budget deficit the only force supporting the economy. Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson is sponsoring a “fiscal responsibility summit,” in Washington on April 28. Among the featured speakers at the Peterson event are former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan, who sat by as the bubble rose to ever more dangerous levels and junk loans were pushed by the million. Robert Rubin, who first set many of the financial deregulation policies behind this disaster in place as Treasury Secretary, and later profited from them to the tune of $110 million as a top executive at Citigroup, will be another speaker. Peterson’s crew hopes to use this high profile event to increase pressure on Congress and the Obama administration to focus on the deficit and set aside efforts to fix the wreckage from the housing bubble and restore healthy growth. The rest of us may not have Peterson’s billions, but we do have the Internet. Therefore CAF will be helping to coordinate a virtual summit that will respond to the Wall Street-funded Peterson fest, by featuring the comments of bloggers on restoring sound economic growth. We ask bloggers, especially economist bloggers, to write on these topics in advance of the Peterson summit and to share their views with us. Please email Bill Scher at bscher@ourfuture.org if you want to participate. We hope that you’ll have some time to join this effort. The people who wrecked the economy should be held accountable for this disaster. They are not the ones who should be setting the national agenda going forward. We can stop them before they do even more damage. Thank you. Dean Baker Co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research Roger Hickey Co-director, Campaign for America’s Future