(This program originally aired Sept. 17, 2020.)
Tom's guest today is Robert B. Reich. He’s a busy and distinguished guy. He served in three administrations, including as Labor Secretary during Bill Clinton’s presidency. He’s a professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, a columnist for Newsweek and The Guardian, an award-winning filmmaker, the founder of the non-profit educational enterprise called Inequality Media, and a frequent presence on television and in the blogosphere.
He’s also the author of 18 books, the latest of which is called The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It. It's a kind of open letter to Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the largest bank on Wall Street, JP Morgan Chase. Dimon is also the Chair of the Business Roundtable, a group of nearly 200 of the nation’s most powerful and influential CEOs. Mr. Dimon and his fellow bankers were largely responsible for the economic catastrophe that gripped the US and the world in 2008, in which the total net worth of American households dropped by $11 trillion dollars...
The net worth of Mr. Dimon has not suffered at all, nor has his influence in the halls of Congress. Robert Reich asserts that Dimon and his fellow members of the Business Roundtable should use their outsized influence to create a society in which no group of people or corporation is as rich and powerful as they currently are.
The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, was published in March by Alfred A. Knopf.
Tom's conversation with Robert Reich was pre-recorded via Zoom, so we aren’t taking calls today, but comments via email and Twitter are welcome.
