# Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts (born 3 April 1939) is an American economist and syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service.

## Quotes

* Noam Chomsky recently wrote that America thinks that it owns the world. That is definitely the view of the Bush administration. But the fact of the matter is that the US owes the world. The US “superpower” cannot even finance its own domestic operations, much less its gratuitous wars except via the kindness of foreigners to lend it money that cannot be repaid. I sometimes wonder if the bankrupt “superpower” will be able to scrape together the resources to bring home the troops stationed in its hundreds of bases overseas, or whether they will just be abandoned.
** "The Collapse of American Power", CounterPunch (3 March 2008)
* The US is not a superpower. The US is a financially dependent country that foreign lenders can close down at will.
** "The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation, CounterPunch (24 October 2008)
* If we add state capitalism to the [George W.] Bush administration’s success in eroding both the US Constitution and the power of Congress, we may be witnessing the final death of accountable constitutional government.
** "The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation, CounterPunch (24 October 2008)
* All of America’s wars except the first—the war for independence — were wars for Empire. Keep that fact in mind as you hear the Memorial Day bloviations about the brave men and women who served our country in its times of peril.
** Our Prospects Against the Russians & Chinese in WW3, Information Clearing House (28 May 2016)
* When a country armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and overwhelmed by its own exceptionalism and indispensability has political and media lunatics equating a bait-click commercial marketing scheme with Pearl Harbor, that country is a recipe for the end of the world.
** Quoted in "Russiaphobia Is Out of Control," Foreign Policy Journal (22 February 2018)
* The military/security complex has resurrected its Cold War enemy so necessary for its outsized budget and power and intends to keep Russia as The Enemy.
** The Self-Genocide of the West, Foreign Policy Journal (26 December 2018)
* All of this self-serving is driving America and its vassals to war with Russia, which might also mean with China. The war would be nuclear and be the end of the West, an act of self-genocide. The US national security establishment is so crazed that Trump’s efforts to get off the war track and onto a peace track are characterized as treason and a threat to US national security.
** The Self-Genocide of the West, Foreign Policy Journal (26 December 2018)
* The Russians are aware that the accusations and demonization that they experience are fabrications. They no longer see the problem as one of misunderstandings that diplomacy can overcome. What they see now is the West preparing its populations for war. It is this perception for which the West is solely responsible that makes the situation today far more dangerous than it ever was during the long Cold War.
** The Self-Genocide of the West, Foreign Policy Journal (26 December 2018)
* As strategic and Russian studies are largely funded by the military/security complex, the universities are also complicit in the march toward nuclear war. Republicans are as dependent as Democrats on funding from the military/security complex and the Israel Lobby.
** The Self-Genocide of the West, Foreign Policy Journal (26 December 2018)
* The Russians are aware that the accusations and demonization that they experience are fabrications. They no longer see the problem as one of misunderstandings that diplomacy can overcome. What they see now is the West preparing its populations for war. It is this perception for which the West is solely responsible that makes the situation today far more dangerous than it ever was during the long Cold War.
** The Self-Genocide of the West, Foreign Policy Journal (26 December 2018)

## Quotes about Roberts

* Paul Craig Roberts characterizes the resulting attitudes [of Western and U.S. intellectuals] as a "fusion of moral scepticism with the demand for moral perfection..."
** Paul Hollander, The Survival of the Adversary Culture (1991), Transaction Publishers, pp. 156–158
* Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, has migrated from the Wall Street Journal editorial page to the world of 9/11 conspiracy theory and Putin worship.
** Michael C. Moynihan, "From ISIS to Ebola, What Has Made Naomi Wolf So Paranoid?" (10 November 2014), The Daily Beast
* Roberts' history of false-flag assertions is certainly well known... Roberts' piece will intrigue that narrow readership fond of fact-lite, rancidly-posited dot-connecting exercises, and repel just about everyone else.
** Matt Welch, "Ron Paul Institute Publishes a Charlie Hebdo 'False Flag' Piece" (15 January 2015), Reason

## External links

* Official website