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Two More Candidates for the McChrystal Treatment
It's not working. Time for the president to concede that the economy is at best stagnating and at worst about to take another steep nose dive. I don't know if we are headed for another Great Depression, as Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman dared suggest recently, but it is amply clear that the Obama strategy, inherited from George W. Bush, of bailing out Wall Street in the forlorn hope that it would repair the economic damage the fat cats inflicted on the rest of us has not worked.
The housing market remains in dire shape, and with it the nest eggs of Americans who are responding by squelching their appetite for consumption. The Wall Street hustlers were made whole, but not so the people whose home mortgages the banks are foreclosing, or businesses and their customers looking for the credit that the banks had promised to free up.
The president conceded last week that our economy is 8 million jobs in the hole despite his bailout and stimulus program. With deficits running wild, heartless Republicans get to claim that six months more of unemployment insurance to 1.7 million out-of-work people whose benefits have ended is more than we can afford.
Of course it's not. That would be a $34 billion outlay to people who would actually spend the money instead of using it for acquisitions, as the big banks have done with far larger gifts of taxpayer funds. That the Republicans who favor huge military spending and tax breaks for the rich and who launched the Wall Street bailout are being hypocritical scoundrels when they say we don't have the money to help ordinary folks is obvious. But the problem is that Barack Obama embraced the GOP strategy, and the failures of the bailouts to turn the economy around, along with the cost of two wars, are now his problems to explain.
What we need is for the president's
economic hotshots, Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, to grant
damaging interviews to Rolling Stone as Gen. Stanley McChrystal
recently did in self-destructing. Perhaps then President Obama would
have the gumption to fire the misleaders of his economic team. It was
always bizarre that those two, who did so much to wreck the economy,
were put in charge of the effort to salvage it. Their previous records
should have provided ample warning that their economic outlook begins
and ends with the demands of Wall Street.
It was Geithner who, as head of the New York Fed, presided over the
$180 billion bailout of AIG, which, as revealed by the 500-page
documented record of that travesty released last week by the Financial
Crisis Inquiry Commission, was a scam to pass taxpayer money to Goldman
Sachs and the other large banks that had created the problem. And it
was Summers who as President Bill Clinton's treasury secretary pushed
through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which guaranteed
"legal certainty" for the toxic derivatives packages that Goldman and
the others sold. At the time Summers assured Congress that "the parties
to these kinds of contracts are largely sophisticated financial
institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting
themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies. ..."
For such not-so-prescient but very convenient insight, Goldman Sachs rewarded Summers with $200,000 for two speeches he gave to its executives while he was an adviser to candidate Obama. Not surprisingly, the new financial regulations proposed by this administration and soon to be signed into law let Goldman and the others so much at fault off the hook.
There is enormous and justifiable populist outrage out there over the antics of a runaway Wall Street that is not being held accountable. Obama could tap into that outrage by taking his cues from a true populist, Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. One of only eight senators to vote against the Clinton-backed 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had done so much to protect the economy, Feingold voted against the Bush bailout too and is now breaking with Obama on his so-called financial reform:
"The bill does not eliminate the risk to our economy posed by ‘too big to fail' financial firms, nor does it restore the proven safeguards established after the Great Depression, which separated Main Street banks from big Wall Street firms and are essential to preventing another economic meltdown. The recent financial crisis triggered the nation's worst recession since the Great Depression. The bill should have included reforms to prevent another such crisis. Regrettably, it did not."
The president's record on the economy is even worse than his performance in Afghanistan, and a reversal of course is much in order. If he doesn't get the message now, the voters will give it to him loud and clear come the November midterm elections.
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21 Comments so far
Show AllIt's naive and in vain to hope Obama reverses course. Why would he, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Geithner, Summers, Bernanke, most Democrats, and nearly every Republican bite the corporate hands that feed them?
The Corporatist-Militarist Ruling Class contributed heavily to both parties in 2008, but more to Democrats, so the Obama administration will continue to repay its sponsors.
The 5-4 Citizens United abomination by the 5 Corporate Justices was the nail in the coffin of democracy, so active corporate manipulation of our elections as well as our economy will only worsen.
If Democrats lose seats in November, those seats will be filled mostly by fellow corporatists - Republicans - who will simply be more obvious, extremist versions of the corporatist Democrats now occupying them.
But, regardless of who is in the White House or has majorities in Congress, the Corporatist-Militarist U.S. Empire will continue to blunder on, blighting the planet.
The corporatist-militarist US Empire will not continue to BLUNDER on...the empire WILL continue to transfer wealth from you and I into the hands of the wealthiest 1% and the corporations with ever greater precision and expediency, just as it has for the past 40 years.
To blunder implies that somebody made a mistake. Despite the Dems and Repugs both telling us that "mistakes were made", anybody who is not suffering from terminal denial realizes that a grand plan to concentrate wealth in the hands of a select few is in progress.
Problem is in finding evidence of your belief that the great financial meltdown was part of the grand plan. It is possible, but in describing it as "inept and careless at best, criminally negligent and malicious at worst," I thought I'd covered myself :) At least, I'm not aware of any hard evidence the financial meltdown and bailout was carefully planned.
Of course there is a deliberate plan to retain wealth, as there always is, because people with money want to keep it, because it makes them feel powerful and secure, no matter how honestly or unscrupulously they came by it. Money truly is the root. It's enough to give socialism a good name.
"Problem is in finding evidence of your belief that the great financial meltdown was part of the grand plan. It is possible, but in describing it as "inept and careless at best, criminally negligent and malicious at worst," I thought I'd covered myself :) At least, I'm not aware of any hard evidence the financial meltdown and bailout was carefully planned."
The Reagan/Bush ideology was designed to make us believe that it was an accident even when it was obvious that it was done on purposes. If you need any help in the details, feel free to ask and one of us will gladly share ideas to pass along so that we don't have to be the only ones in the minority who "get it".
Stanley 1979
I totally agree with you. Elektrokar hasn't read widely and deeply enough to discern patterns in world events, especially socio-political and economic, from the seemingly random and just-so occurrences every day. He/she isn't the only one. There are plenty like him to make the progressive class have no common cause and be perpetually squabbling about "evidence", when evidence is right there in front of their eyes if they focused on it enough with their frontal lobes and churned it in their minds to find logical threads through them. Wasn't it someone in the know in the 1800's (Disraeli?) or early 1900's (Churchill?) who said there are no socio political events of magnitude in the world that are accidents.
Ciao
Reasonisreligion, that is why I am here to help people like Elektrokar. Elektrokar must be new here so let us help him/her and not turn the progressive realm into another "country club" like the politically "liberal" and "conservative" realms. Our job should be to help others see it without the ideological blinders getting in their way. I do not believe in putting people down unless they go stubborn and try to put us down and even then, I will be one of those to raise the awareness. It will not be easy defeating the Reagan/Bush2 ideology but if we keep working at it together, we will prevail.
No doubt you and Stanley agree on many things, so many as to be practically of one mind.
One pattern I am discerning, is that both of you appear to have a disdain for evidence. Just asserting your opinions over and over, doesn't turn them into facts. That is behind all the "squabbling" about evidence. It's good to have evidence before believing you know everything. But I think you both know that, you're just trolling a bit.
Stick around and learn. The evidence you fail to see is YOUR problem and you need to be willing to correct your misunderstanding of the situation.
It's obvious to you the financial meltdown was done on purpose.
You say you have evidence of this, but you don't state any of it.
You say an ideology is making us believe the financial meltdown was an accident. I don't form my opinions about events because of an ideology. I read, watch, and listen to the reports and people who are interviewed (just as YOU do, if you leave off worrying about Reagan's ideology enough), then I decide what I believe or even if I know enough to believe anything.
Ideology has nothing to do with it. I'm perfectly ready to believe any real evidence that it was done on purpose, but I haven't seen any. If you are one of a few who "get it," you may have an excuse to be patronizing, but that sort of talk usually belongs to people who are all talk.
This is exactly the symptom you are experiencing from the Reagan/Bush2 ideology that has kept you too ignorant on what's wrong with this country. You are blinded but in total denial about it. The corporate media doesn't cover everything and in fact distorts and spins what it does report. You want to pay no attention to the 800 lb gorilla? Be my guest but I'm not falling for such ignorance.
"Populist outrage" against Wall St and big banks comes from the left (and extreme left) and right (especially the extreme right).
In his own judgement, but about which we could argue, Obama sits himself somewhere in the middle between the left and extreme right in his role well practiced in his earlier life as a kind of "conciliator" steering a "middle path" between the extremes. While perhaps hoping for such a role as he came to the Presidency, Obama now finds himself in a position he couldn't have anticipated.
The old mutual adversaries of left and right whom Obama might have hoped to steer between and even reconcile to each other and bring together, have turned against Obama the "conciliator". Obama is succeeding in uniting them; they are uniting against him rather than with him. Let me explain.
Because of the "populist outrage" Obama finds himself in an impossible situation. Whereas he might once have been hoping to "reconcile" many on the right with many on the left, he now finds that both left and right are not so much against EACH OTHER as they used to be, but in their "populist outrage" they are more against HIM for his pro status quo "solutions". It is irrelevant whether or not the "populist outrage" is "artificially" whipped up or is being exploited unfairly by hypocritical opportunists, because the effect on Obama's presidency is the same - Obama is seen more and more as being for the status quo and his original support base for "Change you can believe" is falling away in disillusionment
If this is true, Obama should no longer try to do as President what he might have looked forward to before his election, that is, "reconciling" left and right to bring more of them into his "middle" ground. Obama must stop making his own populist sounding rhetoric and instead make stronger decisions to be seen actually solving the problems raised by both the left and right-wing motivated populist attacks on his big spending for war and bailouts.
We may remember that Obama didn't originally start or cause the problems that are rapidly becoming his nemesis. However, before he got elected Obama supported both the Af/Pak war and the bail-out money which gives him much of the responsibility for them. So Obama is now stuck with them while he tries to work out how to save face and get himself out of the mess. However, as he tries to save face he would do well to move more to the left because if he keeps losing his left wing support base because of disillusionment, he will lose the next election by a landslide. The right wing has by now shown Obama that they are not coming to his "middle" ground anyway, no matter how much he moved to the right to try to get them there.
Great article. Corporations have taken over the US governing and lawmaking process. They became so firmly entrenched during the Bush years that our Congress awarded them billions of dollars for being inept and careless at best, criminally negligent and malicious at worst. This has helped prop them up so they can continue their ineptitude and bribing of our duly elected reps.
This year, the corporate bribsters got the US supreme court to okay their influence on elections; now THAT is what I call influence.
However, it's flawed logic to compare a relatively unsophisticated McChrystal to career liars like Geithner and Summers. While the Rolling Stone can cajole and fool a soldier's soldier into believing they are on his side, I doubt anyone still in the Obama administration will fall for that. You do have to wonder what side the RS thinks is worth helping these days.
Although many Americans complain about the bankster bailouts, most Americans have been brainwashed to the point that they do not support restoring New Deal financial industry regulations or implementing other means that would actually solve the problems.
Until progressives stop using words like careless, inept, mistake, blunder, etc. the critical mass to truly change public opinion will not evolve.
No politician, bankster, or other corporatist has been careless, inept, or made any mistakes. They HAVE succeeded in transferring ever more wealth from you and I to the wealthiest 1% and corporations with ever greater precision and expediency, while continuing to keep most Americans cheering for supply-side economics.
Until a majority of Americans are willing to admit that the 2008 meltdown was no accident, that it was a planned event to enrich a few at the expense of the rest of us, the banksters will continue to be further empowered and we will be further impoverished.
RAY: True and incisive post, as usual. It kind of reminds me of the ruse about faulty CIA info as the excuse for attacking Iraq. These people count on the idea that citizens will cut them slack due to the idea of human fallibility. Another example was Bush stating that no one could have expected the levees in New Orleans to become breached. Or Condi stating that no one thought that NYC was going to be attacked.
These insiders manage to deflect all viable evidence (that which could see them indicted in more just times) by maintaining this idea that they are innocent until PROVEN guilty. Since these powerbrokers own the levers of power, the chances of there being cases made to hold them to account are minimal. Therefore they continue to get by on this idea that "mistakes were made," as if the ultimate game plan is not being covertly engineered, step by step, for the blood profits of a sociopathic few at incredible expense to so many.
The corporatists are always united and work together while the progressives and liberals and whatever other label average folks stay divided and fragmented thanks to the Reagan revolution from what I understand. The Reagan revolution was also designed to brainwash people into being divided on accident vs on purpose in almost any economic meltdown that happened for 30 years.
I think he might be willing to nip some corporate hands, there are many. However, there needs to be enough popular support within the professional classes for him to attack these particular giants. If everyone is too cowed by their bosses he will be alone and left hung out to dry.
To comprehend that giving money to people who need it will stimulate the economy, shows an understanding of economics. Denying poor people money but giving it to the rich in the form of bailouts and tax cuts, shows an understanding of capitalism, the crude American kind to be specific.
The president conceded last week that our economy is 8 million jobs in the hole despite his bailout and stimulus program. With deficits running wild, heartless Republicans get to claim that six months more of unemployment insurance to 1.7 million out-of-work people whose benefits have ended is more than we can afford.
What's being described above is a nation that is over and out. The vast majority of voters in this nation will not stop voting for Republicans and Democrats. Stupid people want to be led by other stupid people. Some "advisers" close to The Perfessor probably told him that and he is doing his best to comply.
It was always bizarre that (Geithner and Summers), who did so much to wreck the economy, were put in charge of the effort to salvage it.
P.S. Nothing bizarre about it. To describe that as "bizarre" is to demonstrate latent sympathy for The Perfessor and Democrats in general. The Democrats believe in the destruction of the middle class every bit as much as the Republicans.
The Democrats destroy the middle class in a passive-aggressive fashion while the Republicans destroy the middle class using supply-side propaganda saturation techniques.
Both methods appear to be equally effective.
Where's your signature mordant humor? Not that it's not a good post...
Isn't it about time we called a spade a spade?
There is an old adage that says, "You are known by the company you keep." Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are both "faux" Republicans. All one has to do is look at their closest advisors and the havoc they have wrought on the American people while courting the favor of Wall Street and big business. Just look at the recycled white-collar thugs brought into the Obama Administration from the Clinton Administration. It looks more like a class reunion than "change we can believe in." In fairness to George W. Bush, he was rather akin to a kid given a sack full of candy by Clinton. All he did with it was gorge his own and the Republican appetite, and dismember what was left of this fragile democracy. Obama took up the cause when he was sworn in and we have been on a down-hill trajectory ever since.
Some examples:
1. Rahm Emanuel - former Clintonite in a powerful advisor to Obama.
2. Robert Rubin - informal advisor to Obama. Co-architect of financial degregulation (with Phil Gramm) in the Clinton Administration.
3. Larry Summers - former Clinton Secretary of the Treasury and now a financial insider with Obama.
4. Timothy Geithner - Former NY Fed Chief and confidante of Bill Clinton. Now Secretary of the Treasury with Obama.
5. Leon Panetta - former member of the Clinton Administrationa and now Obama's Director of the CIA.
Then there is a whole cadre of second-tier cronies brought forward that we aren't even aware of. And, if you notice, despite the avalanche of criticism, Obama clings tenaciously to them and keeps them close at hand to advise him. Meanwhile, he totally ignores the best economic minds in the country. Self-imposed ignorance or political cunning?
I think the time has come for the so-called "progressives" to stop giving Obama a free pass on every assault he launches against Middle Class Americans. If we are to get out of this mess, we have to deal with reality and stop the bi-partisan smoke screen. We need a real Democrat and a strong leader who will thumb his/her nose at the Republican noise machine, hold them accountable for the past eight years, and start unraveling all the destruction they heaped upon us during the years Bush & Co. was in control. Courage is never tempered by political expediency. Courage focuses on what has to be done and worries about the consequences later. Real courage is recognized for what it is, and is usually met with a certain degree of respect and deference. I don't see that happening to any great extent in the current Washington milieu.
The backbone of the Democratic Party is hurting badly. It is time they got the help they need and justly deserve. Screw Wall Street, Health Care Companies, Big Pharmaceuticals, the Military/Industrial machine, etc. We need a real leader and soon. If our great Community Organizer has not proven what a sham he is by now, then God help us. 2012 looms on the horizon. Perhaps we need to modify the tired slogan, "Change We Can Believe In," and focus on "Change We Desperately Need!"