The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal on April 6th and x-posted today at The Wild, Wild Left, The Peace Tree,The Independent Bloggers Alliance and Worldwide Sawdust.

How
many economists have you read or watched on television in recent years
that claimed the economy was performing well while you struggled to
make ends meat and keep up with the cost of living? Indeed, until
recently a happy talk virus had infected a cabal of conservative
plutocrats who preached the virtues of limited regulation, market
forces and free trade as wages declined and predatory lenders had a
party. It seemed we were hearing conservative politicians and their
mouthpieces at the Heritage Foundation or Fox news refer to the economy
as “the greatest story never told” at every opportunity.

Now that the housing and credit crisis has metastasized, conservative apparatchiks
are fighting to minimize government intervention on behalf of regular
folks while preserving corporate welfare. They accuse anyone who raises
a fuss of waging class warfare. Instead these agents of the status quo
prefer we erroneously obsess about Social Security going bust and agree
to privatize it for Wall Street's benefit.

Thankfully, renowned economist and the director of the Living Standards Program for the Economic Policy Institute, Jared Bernstein is using his megaphone to fight the madness. With his new book, Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Economic Mysteries),
Bernstein responds to dozens of questions asked by working Americans
that relate to the dollars and cents concerns of real people. Bernstein
who often appears as a commentator on CNBC wrote in the preface of his
book that,

“I’m tired of being stuck in the studio
engaging in rants with Darth Vaders with PhDs. Wouldn’t it be more
useful to have an open-ended, rant-free dialogue with real, everyday
people about their economic questions.”

With Crunch,
Bernstein effectively validates the daily experience of working people
struggling to keep up in a treadmill economy. He also adroitly writes
with accessible prose and powerful anecdotes to both educate readers
about economic nuances and empower them to influence politics in a more
populist direction. Bernstein contends that the rich and powerful have
as much influence on who benefits from the economy as the will of the
market. He therefore hopes to inspire readers not to cede any more
ground to the practitioners of hyper individualism at the expense of
the American community.

One of the most memorable anecdotes in
Bernstein’s book describes how Circuit City announced it planned to lay
off 3,400 sales associates in the spring of 2007 in order to appease
their shareholders. Bernstein utilized this anecdote to illustrate how
corporate greed is both heartless and self-defeating:

“Talk
about in-your face management. I can absolutely see why a firm whose
stock was down by a third over the past year would decide to make some
big changes. But unless your workforce is truly overpaid, replacing a
big chunk of it with lower-paid workers is a recipe for lousier
service, fewer sales, and lower profits. At the time, many predicted
that after the initial jump, stock prices would sink further. We were
wrong, though. They never got that initial bump, and the stock just
kept sliding, down 15 percent a few months later (while the overall
stock market was up strong).”

It’s that kind of
prose that led former North Carolina Senator and populist presidential
candidate John Edwards to issue the following praise:

“Jared
Bernstein’s new book is a must read for everyone who cares about
restoring economic fairness in an America with the greatest income
inequality since the Great Depression. Drawing on everyday examples,
Crunch is an accessible explanation of economic principles presented
with equal parts of insight, humor, and stimulation. In the process,
Bernstein explains how we got to where we are, what to do to fix it,
and why fighting for a fair society is so important.”

An
expert on issues of labor and income inequality, he frequently
testifies on Capitol Hill. Bernstein is also the co-author of eight
editions of The State of Working America and he posts frequently on Josh Marshall’s blog, TPM Café. Longtime readers/listeners of the Intrepid Liberal Journal may recall an interview he did for my blog after his book, All Together Now: Common Sense For A Fair Economy was published in 2006.

Bernstein
agreed to a podcast interview over the telephone about his current book
and the current challenges confronting the American economy. Our
conversation was approximately forty-eight minutes and among the issues
covered includes the housing and credit crisis, needed regulatory
reform, healthcare, globalization, Social Security, America’s
investment deficit and free trade.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST

This interview can also be accessed for free by searching for “Intrepid Liberal Journal” on Itunes.