The Memo that Larry Summers Didn't Want Obama to See

The New Republic:

For the past three years, Washington journalists and politicos have obsessed over a 57-page memo that Barack Obama's incoming economic team prepared for him in late 2008

Read the whole story: The New Republic

Comments

[rickroland]

09:14 PM on 02/24/2012

Oh, and by the way, the article isn't even worth the electrons it was printed with.

[rickroland]

09:06 PM on 02/24/2012

Couldn't they have found a picture with even more nose hair in it?

[Genders]

04:03 PM on 02/24/2012

What did you expect from Banksters?

SWAPS, insurance on bets without reserves are inherently fraud. It's racketeering when the Reaganomics deregulators, in the pockets of the wall street gambling banksters, conspire to allow this fraud. 

The Banksters Robbed us of trillions. The federal Reserve has given them , at .004%, about 16 trillion more, plus 10T$ to foreign banksters. That becomes 260T$ with fractional reserve, that more than the value of the world businesses. Arrest the Banksters for the Fraud: SWAPS and CDO's. Federal reserve system. 

The Ratio of Finance and insurance versus private industry went from 5%/40% in 1980, to 44%/5% today. 

Watch "the Money Masters" 
http://www.themoneymasters.com/
http://webskeptic.wikidot.com/money-masters-transcripts-part-24 
Bankster now literally own us. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Estimated_ownership_of_treasury_securities_by_year.gif 

Phase out fractional reserve while issuing greenbacks. That creates a debt free monetary system

“The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.” Abraham Lincoln

Kucinich http://www.monetary.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/HR-2990.pdf Greenbacks

[webbandit]

11:06 AM on 02/24/2012

For you posters out there who take exception to my use of the word right wing rag (New Republic ),that is what it is, now if I refer to it as Mein kamf then that would be name calling. Airforce#1.

[Kiffanik]

09:08 AM on 02/23/2012

I find it mighty coincidental that the amount of stimulus she proposed, 1.2 trillion, was almost the same as the 1.3 trillion dollar surplus Bush walked into. Additionally, it sounds like from this article, instead of TARP where Bush just handed out money to his pals on the way out the door, we should have combined that money with the Obama stimulus money and done a more targeted purposeful plan to close economic holes. I have said for years it would have been cheaper to do a structure, tiered financial stimulus to taxpayers which would have allowed them to catch up on mortgages, refinance their underwater homes, pay credit card bills, car payments, invest in the economy etc which would have then trickled up to the banks and negated their need for bailout in the first place.

[jstanavgguy]

07:42 AM on 02/23/2012

Just on an aside, if Mr. Summers is going to have pictures taken with his head tilted back, he might want to consider trimming the nose hairs.

[light123]

04:35 AM on 02/23/2012

Following up to MeBadExample question "So we now know that Larry Summers told Obama with a straight face that the economy would 'only' need about 40% of the stimulus that his own people said was necessary--$800 B versus $1.8 T.
The question is WHY." and on my former post,
My answer is:
Mr. Larry Summers could not propose more than 800 Million dollars to the President because otherwise his financial friends, with Mr. Robert Rubin in the front, would have had BIG QUESTIONS TO ANSWER to the AMERICAN PEOPLE, instead of walking rapidly & discreetly out with tens & hundred of million of dollars of bonuses while leaving the rest of America in shambles & without houses & jobs.

[nkurland]

04:19 AM on 02/23/2012

A quick note on the stimulus: The Recovery Act performed largely as intended. Roughly 3 million jobs were created and the package was successful in halting and reversing the tailspin the economy was in.

However, these memos show a profound failure of leadership. By projecting 8% unemployment, his advisers erred badly.. Frankly, this projection reveals, as these memos confirm, close economic advisers to Obama simply downplayed the recession's severity.. Summers "believed more stimulus was almost unambiguously better" but was unwilling to confront Congress.

Summers, Emanuel and countless others came straight from the DLC. To the extent they were concerned about the economy, or healthcare or even financial reform, there was little interest in putting up a fight. Satisfying corporate donors to the DLC took primacy over both the efficacy of the legislation and what the situation actually required. When Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's seat. they simply advised the president to give up on healthcare reform..

This says a lot about the Obama presidency. Namely, his 2008 campaign focused largely on positioning him as post-partisan and therefore the success of any reform was contingent on bipartisan support. We elected a president who showed little willingness to fight the tough battles, then unsurprisingly appointed chief architects of the financial crisis.

Dithering and toadying to corporate America has cost Obama countless opportunities already. As this memo shows, the stimulus was arguably the clearest instance: a chance to difinitively end the recession and validate government intervention in the economy.

[morbius]

10:15 AM on 02/23/2012

And why has Obama cow-towed to wall street? Because they are necessary if he was to get reelected. No one else could come up with the close to billion dollars necessary to win the presidency. So we will have no democracy until there is campaign finance reform. And to do that, we are going to have to have a democratic congress and president willing to fall on their sword and be one termers, rejecting the influence of wall street money. Anybody see this happening any time soon??? We have effectively painted our so called "democracy" into a corner, and the paint ain't drying anytime soon.

[rickroland]

09:11 PM on 02/24/2012

The 8 percent employment by August 2009, if Stimulus wasn't passed 'Right now!' schtick was in full frantic-propaganda mode in February 2009, before Stimulus passed. It was finally signed into law in February 2009 and the next month, March 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment for February 2009 was --

Wait for it --

8.1 percent! Stimulus was one big fat stinkin' full-bore-on lie, was we were already above 8 percent unemployment in the very month Stimulus was passed *and* signed into law.

The U.S. citizenry has been taken for a ride, continually so, for quite a number of years now, more than 50, when it comes to the economy and how the finances of this country are and have been handled.

Stimulus, the 2009 version, should have *never* happened at all.

[morbius]

09:36 PM on 02/24/2012

I'll buy the "taken for a ride" part. The question is, by whom? Follow the money, as deep throat used to say. Who has been raking in the dough? If your honest, you'll have your answer.

[nkurland]

12:27 PM on 02/25/2012

The paper actually projected the unemployment to rise to 9% in Q4 off 2009. So much for your entire argument.

[tweeksmom]

12:07 AM on 02/23/2012

You can tell this man has NO friends. If he did, one of them would have told him about that booger hanging out of his nose....

[peacekitten]

06:10 AM on 02/23/2012

i think that's actually nasal foliage, and needs a weedwhacker instead..........

[whirlybird]

11:56 PM on 02/22/2012

I'm surprised Summers wasn't more concerned about nose hygiene.

[breakingpoint]

11:24 PM on 02/22/2012

he should in prison with Jamie and Lloyd

[peacekitten]

06:11 AM on 02/23/2012

don't forget vikram prandit.  

and those guys are just for starters.

[KIVPossum]

11:04 PM on 02/22/2012

Obama did himself no favor when he appointed and trusted Summers.

[EvieEve]

10:18 PM on 02/22/2012

I can't comment on the article because I'm distracted by all the hair hanging out of his nose. How does he breath?

[whirlybird]

11:57 PM on 02/22/2012

LOL! Ditto...lol.

[MrBadExample]

10:02 PM on 02/22/2012

So we now know that Larry Summers told Obama with a straight face that the economy would 'only' need about 40% of the stimulus that his own people said was necessary--$800 B versus $1.8 T. The question is  WHY.
* Did Summers want the stimulus to fail, giving cover for the GOP to get its act together for 2012?
* Did Summers decide on his own that the bigger number would never fly and therefore stand behind a number that wouldn't come close to fixing the problem?
* Or (my personal favorite): Did Summers realize that an acknowledgment from an incoming president that the Banksters had done that much damage to the economy might lead the citizens derided by Obama as 'the people with pitchforks' to demand perp-walks for his friends?

A lie is a lie no matter who tells it. But finding out the purpose of the lie is necessary. Larry Summers deserves the vilification of the American people for his prevarications.

[repugnicansfearme]

09:58 PM on 02/22/2012

Dude- your barber should introduce you to nose hair trimmers.

[MrGovtCheese]

11:20 PM on 02/22/2012

More like gardener with a weed whacker at at this stage.