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Big boss man, 

Can’t you hear me when I call? 

You ain’t so big, 

You’re just boss, that’s all. 

For 18 years, America has had its own version of the “Big Boss Man” that bluesman Jimmy Reed famously decried. First appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in 1987, Alan Greenspan has served four presidents and, in the process, become a celebrity, the most famous American economist in history.  

Despite a tendency to cloak his pronouncements in convoluted prose, Greenspan’s public statements typically have had a huge impact: When he speaks markets hold their breath and grown men tremble. Now, nearing the end of his career, the Fed chairman has a unique opportunity to use his clout to do something that would greatly benefit the United States and cement his place in history. 

Greenspan can seize this critical moment and tell the truth about our financial situation. Big Boss Al is the one person that all of us—Republican, Democrat, or Independent—would take seriously if he leveled with Americans about, first, stopping our reckless decline into debt, and second, adopting an austerity diet in order to eventually return to fiscal sanity. 

Throughout the world, there are two aspects of American culture that are continuing sources of amazement. One is our seeming endless love of violence of all sorts: our appetite for unfettered aggression in movies, TV shows, and video games; our advocacy of gun ownership; our espousal of capital punishment and blood retribution; and our militarism. The other aspect that bemuses friend and foe alike is our societal delight in living beyond our means. Americans, as individuals, carry the highest debt load in the world. Moreover, many of our largest companies are deeply in debt, the result of either baroque financial arrangements, such as leveraged buyouts and the associated use of “junk” bonds, or simply terrible management. And, of course, our biggest debtor is the federal government, which continually spends more than it takes in.  

So extreme has this malaise become that the Bush administration recently submitted a fiscal “budget,” which will take the United States deeper into debt, and intentionally excluded the $100 billion cost of the ongoing war in Iraq. (This outrage provoked hardly a murmur of protest from the press.) 

Most American economists see our financial course as disastrously unsustainable. Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warns that the Bush administration’s cavalier attitude about our national debt risks plunging us into a depression. 

Because, of course, our national profligacy depends upon the largesse of others: China and Saudi Arabia, for example, buy huge amounts of our Treasury bills and bonds; for political reasons they are satisfied with the relatively low interest rates we pay, compared to equivalent international offerings, such as Euro bonds. If these lender countries decided to quit being such easy marks, then America would have to pay prevailing interest rates. Forcing the Federal government to actually be competitive in its borrowings would have a domino effect, causing all interest rates to spike upward. This would have a devastating affect on the economy.  

As if playing Russian roulette with the national debt weren’t bad enough, the Bush administration continues to feed American’s addiction to petroleum. This is also an unsustainable policy, one that makes our economy even more vulnerable to geopolitical perturbations, such as a terrorist attack on the oilfields in Saudi Arabia. 

The big question is: who will step forward and warn Americans about our precarious situation? Who will tell citizens the truth that we have to alter our lifestyles dramatically and begin living within our means?  

For obvious reasons, the Bush administration isn’t going to do this. Their entire 2004 campaign was based on the leitmotif that America is the best country in the world, where everything is dandy, and will stay that way as long as George is president. And, of course, Bush and his close advisers are oil people; they aren’t going to warn the country about its addiction to fossil fuel, because they are raking in big bucks from their roles as “pushers.” 

Furthermore, reversing their predilection for deficit spending would violate two cardinal rules of the administration: It would mean admitting to a mistake, confessing that continually running in the red is bad for the country, and it would shortcut the Neo-Conservative dream of shrinking the Federal government by making things so awful that Congress has no choice but to eliminate entitlement programs. As a final reason, we should remember that while George W. Bush is our first MBA president and was a CEO before entering the world of politics, the businesses he was responsible for typically were unsuccessful, suffering from severe financial problems. 

Bush, it seems, was not paying attention at Harvard Business School and, therefore, never learned the importance of balancing a budget. 

That’s where Alan Greenspan comes in. Big Boss Al is 79 and nearing the end of his remarkable tenure as Fed chair. It seems reasonable to ask that he use his supposedly non-partisan position to tell the nation the truth it desperately needs to hear. He had an opportunity on March 3 when he testified before the House of Representatives Budget Committee. 

In fact, he did warn that Federal budget deficits are “unsustainable,” and action must be taken immediately. Greenspan observed that the longer the current pattern of annual budget shortfalls continues, the more difficult it will be to make the necessary changes. He layered this warning with the observation that demographic trends, particularly the aging of baby boomers, will likely drive up costs of Social Security and Medicare. In other words, he spelt out the basic elements of America’s sorry condition—except for our petroleum addiction. 

The problem was that he stopped short; he identified the problem but not the solution. Apparently, Big Al values his role as America’s own version of the Delphi Oracle and understands that soothsayers are supposed to cloak their pronouncements in ambiguity. Thus, when pressed on how to remedy our national fiscal crisis, Greenspan took the easy way out, pontificating that America could either choose to raise taxes or to cut programmatic expenses.  

Duh! 

Big Boss Al squandered his opportunity to speak clearly and instead offered a series of Byzantine options: For example, he opined that the United States might levy a consumption tax, a proposal that immediately gained the support of economic conservatives, such as Steve Forbes, and few others. 

Rather than be a real leader and tell Congress and Americans that the Bush Administration must tell America the truth about the Federal budget and our long-term deficit, rather than signal that as a first step to fiscal sanity, tax cuts for the rich should be rescinded, Greenspan chose to play it safe. He chose to call attention to the problem but not to stick his celebrity neck out and propose a workable solution. 

The Fed Chairman’s performance displayed a leadership style that many observers have complained about for years: When the going gets tough, he’s not around. In other words, “You ain’t so big. You’re just boss, that’s all.” 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net. 

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