A plea to the European press: Help save us from ourselves!

[ChairOne]

Krugman:

"The U.S. news media have provided readers and viewers with little information about how privatization has worked in other countries. Now my colleagues have even fewer excuses: there's an illuminating article on the British experience in The American Prospect, www.prospect.org, by Norma Cohen, a senior corporate reporter at The Financial Times who covers pension issues.

Her verdict is summed up in her title: "A Bloody Mess." Strong words, but her conclusions match those expressed more discreetly in a recent report by Britain's Pensions Commission, which warns that at least 75 percent of those with private investment accounts will not have enough savings to provide "adequate pensions." "

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/14/opinion/14krugman.html?oref=login&hp

We are in essentially the position of Descartes, at the end of his first Meditation:

We will suppose, then, not that Democrats, who are soverignly good and the fountain of truth, but that some malignant republican, who is at once exceedingly potent and deceitful, has employed all his artifice to deceive us. I will suppose that the stories about Social Security told by the President, the Congress, the MSM, are nothing better than the illusions of dreams, by means of which this republican has laid snares for my credulity....

We can't trust pretty much anyone in this country with Social Security, it seems. Perhaps we would do better to encourage external sources, the BBC, The Financial Times, (even) The Economist, Reuters, and so forth, to play up their bad experiences with privatization. Perhaps if they all squawked loudly enough, this would produce pressure on the American media to stop making shit up (and allowing their guests to), and start getting shit right.

I'm not saying this is the magic bullet or anything, just tossing it out as one helpful piece in a larger puzzle...