I remember sitting in an anteroom at Queens College back in 2000. I was there, along with Senator Schumer, to introduce Hillary Clinton, who was running for her first term as senator from New York. Before I went out to make my introduction, a very young woman who was a Clinton staffer looked at me and said, "What do you think of Hillary?" As I was already there to participate in the campaign, I was puzzled. "Do you mean personally?" I asked. "No," she said. "For president!" Although Rick Lazio had no real chance of defeating Mrs. Clinton, her name wasn't yet on a door in the Russell Building, and 'Hillary for President' was starting to roll.
Two years earlier, I had asked a prominent Democratic political consultant about the 1998 Senate race, with the Democratic primary between Schumer, Mark Green and Geraldine Ferraro. All three were vying to finally dispose of the hated Alfonse D'Amato. My consultant friend explained how Ferraro would be tough and would likely stay in the race for some time. "Ferraro had gathered all of her supporters in New York back in 84, when she was the vice presidential nominee. It was a very significant and emotional event for many of these women. Gerry asked that if she ever needed their support again, could she count on them. All the women pledged to be there for Gerry, no matter what. This was a group of powerful, female New York Democrats. They either had a lot of money themselves, or their husbands did. You could tell that they were less concerned with actually winning the race. They just wanted a woman nominee. One of them told me that "We'll never win a race without becoming the nominee. It all begins here. It may take time, but we're building toward something." There are wealthy, politically connected, educated women who want a woman candidate, whether she has a chance in the general election or not. They're building toward something.
Of course, one thing a Clinton candidacy should be building toward is how to deal with the looming disaster in the financial markets that we now face. My friend Max Keiser, who reports for both BBC and Al Jazeera on global financial issues, has a valuable take on what a Clinton versus Obama economic plan might look like. Keiser e-mailed me this brief anaysis:
Looking at it purely from economic angle;
Obama has Paul Volcker as economic adviser -- he mopped up the stagflation of the '70s with 'tough love' of higher interest rates.Hillary has Robert Rubin -- who demolished the last vestiges of Glass-Steagel which opened up the flood gates of securitizing loans and the current subprime (and now prime) credit crisis.
The current plan by Rubin's Goldman Sachs buddies Hank Paulson, (and Ben Bernanke), and their UK counterparts -- is to simply repackage all this bad debt and resell it again.. (making banks another fee); and hope that the problem will go away...
I do not believe this plan will work -- because in order for it to work -- long term interest rates have to go down -- which they are not likely to do now that China and India are no longer a source of cheap labor they once were... (the productivity miracle Alan Greenspan was always talking about amounted to outsourcing labor to China and now that game is up as wages in China go up and so-called productivity gains have faded).
The absolute necessity now is to stop bailing out banks, stop flooding the economy with more cheap money (money supply in US is running at an historic high of 16%), and stop raising the debt ceiling.
The buck (as in US dollar) has to stop being devalued by Paulson, Bernanke, etc. and their money printing banking friends or prices for food and gas will just continue zooming higher....
A hard, and probably a brutally hard recession has to be allowed to happen right now and the US needs to take its medicine for Greenspan's sins..
Putting off the day of reckoning with more re-packaging of debts as is the current 'master plan' of Paulson and Co. is only going to jeopardize the US dollar and possibly kill the US dollar off completely. (massive devaluation).
In other words: if Obama will force America to swallow a Paul Volcker anti-inflation economic pill than there really is no choice.
Voting for Hillary is voting for certain US dollar death.
(unless you own gold, and you are rooting for a dollar death, then vote for Hillary).
I will be back with more of Keiser's insights (he should be posting here) and Obama versus Hillary comparisons later.
Here are some links to read more about the financial implications of Clinton versus Obama, all provided by Max Keiser.
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/hearing/financialsvcs_dem/testimony_-_kuttner.pdf
This particular issue has been notably absent from the MSM as they prefer to cover irrelevancies like the sniping between the two campaigns. The repeal of Glass-Steagall has been gaining ground in the news recently, which is an encouraging sign:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=glass+steagall&btnG=Search+News
I hope Clinton apologists examine the issues and problems facing us more objectively rather than nostalgically. Bill Clinton did not create the economic tech boom of the 90's. Clinton's consistent policies of deregulation have given us corporate media (Telecommunications Act of 1996), and led to gross financial abuse on Wall Street (Repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act), corporate bailouts, and he left the door open for abuse by the criminal Bush administration.
Those who wish to support the Democratic Party in a meaningful way, must understand that the DLC has hijacked the Democratic Party and moved it to the right to advance the corporatist agenda. Bill and Hillary Clinton are both DLC leaders: http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/5/27/55951/1586
What are man's truths ultimately? Merely his irrefutable errors.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11034127/the_low_post_why_the_democrats_are_still_doomed
Senator Clinton and the DLC's real plan for the Iraq war:
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=450004&subid=900021&contentid=254187
Felix Rohatyn is a longtime Clinton ally and DLC backer:
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=106&subid=122&contentid=250091
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01EFDE1239F930A25751C0A960958260
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Rohatyn
The real scoop on Felix Rohatyn, and his financial holocaust:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0301/S00080.htm
I happen to agree with you on several levels. Its nice to know intelligent, reasonable people such as yourself are involved and trying to make a difference.
America has ony ONE choice.
Obama 08
"Now that it's your birthday, I don't know what to do.
Can't give you a hybrid or a penthouse with a view.
Can't even buy a little present - I'm much too broke, I find. (with this economy?)
But there is one way, I can save the day, and I sure hope you won't mind, that....
I can't give you anything but Obama in '08, baby!
Obama as President would be just great, baby!
Dream awhile, scheme awhile, get out and VOTE!
Blog at HuffPost, (you're the most) and we'll all be cheering for Obama!"
OK, I'm not Cole Porter! Seriously, Happy Birthday and may this year be a happy and peaceful one!
The USA would continue paying 3% to 8% interest to private banks on the National Debt.
The USA is a SOVERIGEN NATION!!!!!!!!
The USA can print it's own money!!!!!
JFK wrote and EXECUTIVE ORDER that created the SILVER CERTIFICATE.
A U.S. DOLLAR BACKED BY SILVER.
We could then pay off the Federal Reserve with "REAL" U.S. DOLLARS and present the world with a currency with real value. Social Security is saved. Medicare is saved and we regain control of our ecomony.
Of course the banking laws would have to be rolled back to BEFORE REGEAN/ THE BUSH YEARS.
If not even a currency with true value would not survive with these theives of today.
That's the advantage of being the world's currency. There is no conversion working against you so the debt in finite dollar terms has not changed. The size of the debt has in effect been shrunk ... still enormous, but shrunk significantly nonetheless. Now America just needs to seriously cut spending.
As bond prices fall, long term interest rates rise and this pressures millions more US homes into negative equity and foreclosure; which has the knock on effect of destabilizing the bank's balance sheets again; requiring more Fed bailouts which in turn stokes money printing i.e. inflation; which then has the effect of further diminishing the value of the dollar and the whole thing repeats on itself in a vicious cycle.
Simply allowing the dollar to fall is probably not going to work - the uptick in exports due to a lower dollar won't counter the negative impact of the aforementioned vicious cycle.
For 60 years, the US had an incredible advantage of printing and doing commerce with the U.S. dollar, the world's reserve currency but, that advantage has been squandered; the military spending; and I just saw an '07 military budget of 1.7 trillion is mostly to blame for draining America's coffers and turning the US into the world's biggest debtor nation with very little ability to pay those debts back short of selling off large pieces of America's infrastructure.
"Warren Buffett, describes America as "rich spending junkies" who could turn into a nation of "sharecroppers".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2005/mar/07/usnews.internationalnews
How's his daughter doing? (That little piece of...).
His former wife is a vindictive narcissist who exposed her daughter to public humuliation because she thinks about only herself and how she might get sympathy for it instead of doing what is best for her child.
And you only make him seem smarter than you with your insults.
Obama is in no way ready to handle the economic crisis!!
Hillary was Vice President for 8 years----a time of prosperity for all.
I hate to say it, Alex, but I think you're a tad sexist.
How about this: Robert Rubin is one of the big guns to blame for the subprime mortgage crisis. It's deregulation that started in the Clinton administration coming home to roost.
zomgwtfbbq, I must be sexist!!
Granted, I could be reading this statement incorrectly but the contest for the first female Presidential candidate began way before 2000, and it wasn’t in Queens, it was in Brooklyn, NY. The women who stood in emboldened solidarity that day in 2000 have forgotten the significance of the woman who ran for President under Republican leadership in 1972 – her name was Shirley Chishlom. Congresswoman Chisholm became the first woman and the first African-American to seek the nomination of the Democratic Party. She knew she had no chance to get elected; she ran "to give a voice to the people the major candidates were ignoring."
Nicholas Von Hoffman’s ‘Economic Chaos, Political Consequences’ delivers this truth; neither candidate is capable of saving us from the sinking USS Titanic economy. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/howl
USD = R.I.P.
Respectfully, I think it is strange that someone would post a comment like this without explaining why you find this piece "painful to read". Anybody can say that, but I would really like to know why you think that.
3) I'm not clear exactly how OBAMA will induce high interest rates. Volcker was able to do so as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, but Bernanke is Chairman until 2010 and he hardly seems likely to comply with a President Obama in such a plan. In order for Obama to get the austerity plan he apparently desires, he'd have to appoint a new Fed Chairman early on in his first year as President. That would take a lot of cajones and I personally see another Bernanke term regardless of who becomes President. In any case, there's no guarantee that any new Fed Chairman will do the President's bidding.
If such a plan exists, I'd love to see Obama address it. I doubt Obama is that Machiavellian. In your search for praise, Alec, you've painted the man a menace and a monster...
I'll disregard the fact that the first two paragraphs contribute nothing to the central argument of the article. The rest of the argument is spurious on its face.
1) The presentation contained is merely what "a Clinton versus Obama economic plan MIGHT look like. " (emphasis mine). This piece of speculation is fueled by one economic advisor on each candidate's campaign staff. The article itsefl if an imaginary battle between Volcker and Rubin, not between Clinton and Obama.
2) I've never heard Obama clamor for higher interest rates, which according to Max Klein is the central tenant of his economic recovery plan. It seems an odd campaign promise on the face of it. I do agree that low interest rates may be adversely impacting commodity prices, but believe that a purposefully induced austerity plan is a little more "tough-love" than middle class American familes can take at this point. All in all, it sounds like more of a Republican plan than a Democratic one.
continued below
I don't see how it applies to Obama's supposed "plan" to induce staglfation to shock the economy back into rhythm, though. It's a dumb proposal.
I think one of the MOST IMPORTANT things to consider about the candidates are who they have advising them. These are the people most likely to hold key positions in their adminstration. It's unfortunate that many of these advisors are in the shadows during the campaign but are largely responsible, ultimately, for making policy that affects all of us.