I agree with Mr Lindorff on the matter of replacement economic advisors, and a new Treasury Secretary. Add to that a new Fed Chairman (Bernanke is clueless).

James Galbraith is particularly apt when it comes to fresh approaches. In particular, he supports a living wage strategy that relies on value, both human and economic, as the basis for determining wages. His approach explicitly limits the oligopoly power of employers in the labor market.

He is also open-minded on qiestion of whether economic growth is an unqualified good, and cognizant of the critical environmental and economic damage being done by our use of fossil fuels in the transporatation and agricultural sectors.

His recent book, "The Predator State," is a must-read.

Obama told us not to worry as he stacked his cabinet with right-wing corporate pimps.

They'd be following his blueprint now.

Such naivety.

For Geithner and Summers Wall Street entitlement is religion.

Religious fanatics cannot be changed.

I still haven't figured out if Obama is naive, corrupt, stupid or a coward?

"Of course, it could be that Obama is really not interested in radically changing the US economy, and its financial system..."

Then he will fail. He has no choice. Failure or...change. Ironically enough.

"He should seize the moment, shitcan his corrupt and inept economic team and sack his military advisers, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his Centcom commander David Petraeus, and bring in people who will tell him how to get the US out of both conflicts pronto.

If he fires and replaces his economic and military teams, and announces both a quick end to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and the immediate break-up of the country's big failed national banks and financial institutions, he has a chance to become a great president"

Not going to happen. Don't you just know it. He is falling on his face in no time. Too bad, what a waste.

"Obama has no shortage of good people to turn to: Nobel economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman, former World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz and economist James Galbraith"

How about Naomi Klein? She's Canadian, but I think she has US citizenship.

Anyway, Obama is getting it from all sides. If he wants to be democratic, let him have online referendums and let the people decide all these issues. If a handful of legislators can come up with a handful of ideas, imagine how many ideas 300 million people could come up with. Then we vote for the best ones.

The author makes excellent suggestions and offers clear examples of what Obama must do to wrest the government from the jaws of Wall Street and the MIC. But does anyone here at CD's seriously believe that Obama will heed this advice?
Since Obama's pick of Joe Biden as his V.P. running mate, it has been pretty obvious to me at least, that he takes his cue from corporate America. The subsequent stacking of his cabinet with career neo-cons has only further strengthened my belief that his presidential legacy will be anything but remarkable.
With Clinton, John Kerry and Lieberman being such staunch closet Republicans, (while calling themselves "Democrats!") is it any surprise that Obama has followed them down the same path? It appears that the vested interests of Wall Street have Obama and all of his ducks in a row.
I'm afraid when Obama has come and gone he will best be remembered for his grass roots election strategy, the color of his skin and not much more.

Although it looks like he's kind of screwed this up, still..... imagine what it would be like if McCain had won. I sure hope Obama would have a lunch/dinner(s) with Nader some time soon. At least there's a chance this president would listen, unlike the previous one.

Once again I whole-heartedly agree with Mr. Lindorff.

I have recently been considering the moves by this administration, and wondering if they aren't doing the conservatives' bidding to the extreme. One of the causes of the economic downturn results from the incredible disparity in wealth. The conservatives have long pushed for tax cuts to the rich. Obama has taken that one step further, and instead of just cutting their taxes he is actively handing them money.

Obama won't jettison Geithner and Summers et al and they won't step down, just as David Vitter or Larry Craig never stepped down. Even if they did, two Mofo's of equal dishonesty would simply fill their spaces. The Great Hustle must be preserved at all costs because it now constitutes the tip of the economic spear in this country whose unquenchable lust for scamdollars cannot be abated. Like some game of economic musical chairs, when the music stops, they'll all be sitting and we'll be left holding the empty bag.

Stiglitz also has a Nobel...

"Of course, it could be that Obama is really not interested in radically changing the US economy, and its financial system."

Could be? And, don't forget, it's not just the US economy we're talking about, it's basically the economy of the planet - and none of the members of the worldwide mafia are interested in radically changing anything that might mean even a penny less of money, power and control.

Do you know how much money are WS execs and fat-cat investors fighting for these days ? Obama cannot go against these masters of the universe cold turkey and deny them the bailout they "deserve" (since they "concede" to the taxpayers the money that the taxpayers earn anyway, according to their delusional self-serving world view!). If he did, this neo-feudal class of parasites would cough up in a sec more than enough savings to hire full time and for several years every one of the many mercenary armies of the USA plus the whole of organized crime, just to get rid of him. Obama must proceed carefully so he can change things when it's possible. Time is on his side since the dozens of trillion dollars of financial vaporware that need to be "saved" cannot possibly be "ameliorated" without ruining the USA or ruining the fat cats. So be patient and be careful about what you ask for, else you may end up having to whine about "the friend of the usurer" aka joseph biden...

This "Greatest Heist in American History," as Naomi Klein calls it,is so public and so obvious that I believe "average joes" certainly have a working grasp on the fact that not only will it not benefit them, but that they are getting screwed. And although I understand that Obama is cut from different cloth than G-dub, I think that sometimes when we lefties cling to that at-least-he-might-sit-down-and-have-dinner-with-Nader hope--it comes from a place of frustration and not hope and not power.
The only way to fix the wreckage that seventy years of hypercapitalist imperialism has left us is to re-organize the working-class (note--this includes the so-called middle-class as they never really existed in difference with the working-class).
Post-McCarthyism, left many labor unions as shells of what they were before when radical politics, direct action, and economic theory informed their practice. A few modern unions like the SEIU provides an effective template for organizing the most vulnerable sectors of labor: women, undocumented immigrants, and people of color.
Let us follow some of these examples in finding creative and effective ways to begin again to organize the working-classes to meet this fight head-on.

What else would one expect from Lawrence Summers?

The man has been a dirtbag ever since he was at the World Bank.

Here are some telling facts about this criminal mind, who thinks that women are intrinsically inferior to men and who in all seriousness suggested that pollution and garbage produced by First World countries such as the U.S.A. be sent to the less polluted regions of the Third World:

1991-93: Chief economist of the World Bank

July 2, 1999: Appointed U.S. Treasury Secretary; served through the remainder of the Clinton Admistration.

2001: Named president of Harvard University. Resigned from that post in Februray 2006, after a relatively brief and turbulent tenure of five years, nudged by Harvard's governing corporation and facing a vote of no confidence from the influential Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Eventually alienated professors with a personal style that many saw as bullying and arrogant. His well-known desire to change Harvard's culture, which he saw as complacent, was accompanied by slights to some faculty members and missteps like his statement in 2005 that women might lack an intrinsic aptitude for mathematics and science.

November 2008: named to Barack Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board.

The following memo was issued by Summers while he was working at the World Bank.

DATE: December 12, 1991
TO: Distribution
FR: Lawrence H. Summers
Subject: GEP

'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.

The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.

Postscript
After the memo became public in February 1992, Brazil's then-Secretary of the Environment Jose Lutzenburger wrote back to Summers: "Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane... Your thoughts [provide] a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional 'economists' concerning the nature of the world we live in... If the World Bank keeps you as vice president it will lose all credibility. To me it would confirm what I often said... the best thing that could happen would be for the Bank to disappear." Sadly, Mr. Lutzenburger was fired shortly after writing this letter.

this whining and hoping for the great leader's redemption must stop. what helps now is i) to publicize non-stop which are the great fortunes that demoblicans are trying to save by "saving the financial system" and denounce their owners as members of a neo-feudal class with names and addresses (no, nobody wants to save "the banks" or "WS", how can anybody be so naive and fall for such an obfuscation!); ii) convince the public that the bailout money should be used to jump-start the economy directly with or w/o the co-operation of WS and private banks; iii) make sure that obama and the demoblicans are confronted at every stop with questions about who are the specific *individuals* who would benefit personally most if the financial system is "saved" and why exactly these *individuals* deserve so much to be saved at a price of billions of dollars each.

changing the public's mood and informational sophistication will give obama the freedom to move in the right direction. he is smart, he does not want to be a martyr and go down in flames.

so let's stop complaining about WS, the banks, and the great leader's lack of leadership and vision. let's make sure the citizenry understands where obama should go and why and that it starts demanding it and loudly so. ask the citizenry if it really wants, e.g., that the randolphs' billions in derivatives be purchased at face value from them by the taxpayers "to save the financial system".

we elected Obama, stop complaining. Hey at least he ain't McCain! Yea we all win!

Most of the time--Common Dreams--is an asset----They should remove whinners from the editorial.. We deserve better---we are a Nation headed for change--the Worst of the Worst change handed to President Obama on Jan 20th is a "Leftover Plate". I can only guess what a mess following behind Paulson and Ex President Bush. Give "Our President" a little rope, quit trying to hang him with it before you give it to him--just a little over 50 days and the "Media"--"Not the Majority that mandated change" is the whiners. Try to help the President---or at least try not to hinder him.