A tale of two presidents. One is president of a country of about 300,000 people -- Iceland -- a country about the size of Virginia, President Olafur R. Grimsson. The second is president of a country of about 300,000,000 people, the United States. President Obama.
Both their presidencies have been scarred by the financial crisis. Both have had to balance the interests of their people against the interests of their bankers.
President Obama has allowed that balance to tilt in favor of the bankers.
President Grimsson yesterday took a stand against bankers and international creditors, including the British and Dutch governments.
Instead, he stood up to defend the interests of his people.
He vetoed legislation agreed to by the parliament under which Icelandic taxpayers were due to shoulder the burden of losses incurred by a collapsed private Icelandic bank. The matter will now be put to a referendum and the President Grimsson's action will likely be endorsed by the people.
His courage stands in stark contrast to that of President Obama.
Americans woke up on September 15, 2008 to find their economy on the brink of systemic failure.
While the crisis was averted by massive taxpayer-funded bail-outs, the burden of losses was transferred on to the shoulders of middle class Americans. Unemployment and foreclosures rocketed, and the government deficit ballooned.
To avoid systemic economic failure, and in defiance of the dogma of the Chicago School of Economics, private Wall St. losses were nationalized and bankers were not just protected but cosseted.
After September 15, 2008, Icelanders woke up to find their banks failing, their currency devalued, and their economy effectively bankrupted. Many citizens and all of their bankers faced massive losses.
What happened next? Well, both countries held elections, and both elected progressive politicians as leaders. But now the paths followed by the leaders of these two countries have diverged. One has stood up to the bankers, and refused to nationalize private losses. The other faces a precipitous decline in political support as he bows to the bankers, and effectively victimizes taxpayers.
Unsurprisingly, Wall St. profits and bonuses have soared under Obama's watch and that of Fed Chairman Bernanke, while the monopolization of Wall St. has intensified. Worse than that, the bankers have been invited in -- to both the Treasury and the Congress -- to stall and undermine proposed regulation of the sector.
This concession of huge power has, naturally, gone to their heads.
Far from being grateful for the president's continued support, for his administration's kid-glove handling of the finance sector, and for the generosity of government guarantees, bankers have, like many disillusioned Americans, become contemptuous of the American Presidency. After all, they, not the elected president, are the real governors of the country.
So contemptuous are they that Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, John J. Mack, chairman of Morgan Stanley; and Richard D. Parsons, chairman of Citigroup failed to turn up to a meeting President Obama had especially convened on the 14th of December.
This in contrast to the way they turned up early at the Paulson Treasury last year, after less than 24 hours notice, to collect $10 - $25 billion of taxpayer money.
Where will this all lead?
We can expect further financial turbulence in Iceland, but President Grimmson can be sure of one thing: popular political support for his stand against the bankers. Support that will stiffen the spines of legislators and regulators, and ultimately subordinate the interests of finance to the interests of the Icelandic people.
Next November the opposite is likely to occur in the United States. President Obama will lose political support and his enemies will gain from his administration's failure to stand up for the people, and against the bankers.
As for Wall St? They will be cooking up the next financial crisis with which to undermine a popular, elected American president.
Americans need to forget the divide that they arbitrarily assign to themselves. Being "right", "left", "conservative", "progressive" etc is irrelevant when it comes to saving America. Only by aligning ourselves as "Americans" first can that happen and Obama won't bring everyone together in a "bi-partisan" manner as he promised. He has already proved that too.
J
How I wish that Pres. Obama lived up to any of the change he touted and promised. I can see that he has courage. Where has he hidden it this first year? Or has he just drunk too much D.C. koolaid on arrival?
Yes, he will pay the price in 2010, as will Congressional Dems, hopefully Senators the biggest price since they have been the biggest betrayers of the American People the past two years.
But Republicans are no better!!! So hopefully they too will pay the price.
THROW THE BUMS OUT!!!!
Democrats AND Republicans.
DUMP INCUMBENTS!!!
Sadly it looks like that includes the White House, which is so FULL of Incumbents from both Washington AND Wall Street!
"When a...government desires to borrow money it must divest itself for the time being of all sovereign powers, and come before its subjects as a private corporation. It must bargain with those who have money to lend, and satisfy them as to questions of payment and security.... The broad theory of constitutional liberty is that the people have the right to govern themselves; but the historical fact is that, in the attempt to realize this theory, the actual control of public affairs has fallen into the hands of those who possess property. It follows from this that when property-owners lend to the government, they lend to a corporation controlled by themselves."‡
‡Henry Carter Adams, Public Debts: An Essay in the Science of Finance (New York: D. Appleton, 1887), pp. 7, 9.
A million words written on a post will not make the economy recover faster. Whether Obama win or lose the next election will not make the economy recover faster.
Is this the site that Progressives go and die. I am so tired of walking over your outstretched bodies.
Buyer's Remorse!
Can we please put this urban legend to rest once and for all. Obama is NOT a progressive. No progressive would ever look at his congressional record and subsequent actions as president and believe for one second that he was progressive.
He is a corporatist of the same mold as Clinton and he will need to shoulder the blame for the next collapse that will happen because he didn't take a progressive approach to the failure of our banking system.
This whole article is just one example of how Obama is not a progressive, so let's stop applying that descriptive to him. It's absolutely false.
So for those who would reply to this with knee-jerk Bushie-like support of Obama, I'll ask a few questions: Are we out of Iraq? Is our policy involving the Afghan war anything but the same Joke-In-Motion it was under Bush, i.e. throw more meat to the grinder? How's that economy? Healthcare? Civil rights? Secret prisons where we torture people to death, with no effort to determine their innocence or guilt? For god's sake, we can't even get Obama to make a strong stand on ANYTHING. Even when he has overwhelming public support. He's a coward, plain and simple. And he was put into a job that should belong to those who realize that serving the people as a whole is more important than his career, his health, his family, and even his life. Why? Because in the balance are BILLIONS of lives, livelihoods and family members.
But what has he done? Shown us that a mere few hundred people at most are who he values. And that they're more important than EVERYONE else. No matter that these few created and perpetuated ALL of these problems, social, economical, and governmental alike. No matter how you slice it, the banksters and large corporations own Obama, as well as the government at large. Period.
Its the absence of those conditions, call them regulations, call them controls - that imply that a democratically elected administration has prioritised the interests of bankers over the interests of taxpayers....
What DOES happen when countries abjure the bankers is that external and internal forces are brought to bear to attempt to "destabilize" whatever solution is put in place and either topple the regime or make things so miserable for the people of that country that other leaders will think twice before pursuing a similar course.
But there are countries in relatively recent history that have stood up to such pressure (Argentina is one such country, there is another but its somewhat-related crimes far outweigh thegood it achieved on the economic front). Mexico's "el Barzon" movement knocked out the 60+ year ruling party and we have a version here growing in YouTube phenom Ann Minch's debtors revolt: http://www.debtorsrevoltnow.com
If anyone reading this is personally seriously affected, my book "Debt Hope: Down and Dirty Survival Strategies" provides help and hope. You can get it as a .PDF at http://www.myhopeseries.com or at Amazon for the Kindle.
It's hard to define the category of 'average American', but I'll try and work with it.
If the FDIC fulfilled its mission and protected depositors, no one who had savings on the commercial side of those banks would have been wiped out.
If the 'average American' had mutual funds or 401K's that were loaded with banking stocks and financial stocks, he would have lost money near term.
If the 'average American' bought banking or financial shares directly, he would have lost more, depending on how many of the banks were allowed to fail and how many were merged into other institutions. There is a risk involved in investing. The bailout was geared to protect the shareholders of the banks and insulate them from the consequences of the bank's fraudulent mortgage con and derivatives plays, and I don't think 'shareholder danger' warrants government rescue.
Were the shares of some of the largest banks allowed to go belly up, the markets would have reacted horribly, and international capital would have fled the country. The banking cartel would have been furious if they failed to extort the taxpayer bailout, and they would have thrown a fit of pique that would have thrown the markets into turmoil. Everything that is rigged can be un-rigged. They hold the levers.
I could go on, but I hit the word limit.
The Obama adm. tried to attach some rules (although weak) with little result. The fact is we live in a capitalist state. The President have no control over free enterprise. What law can he enact to keep corporations from giving bonuses and raises. Even with the weak laws on the book, the Republicans are trying to eradicate them.
Maybe this does make his administration look ineffective. But what can he do (with no help from Republicans and blue dog democrats) to correct this. I hope we all can agree, there is not enough votes, will, or spine for fixture of these problems.
We need leaders to help us do that - in the way that Roosevelt did - but we the people cannot just settle for 'disappointment'. We have to get back in there, and fight to gain back from the bankers control over one of civilisation's greatest ideals and achievements - democracy.
Will they stand for the 'people', or will they stand for their pimps.
So, I'm not sure why you would consider progressives the enemy.
If McCain/Palin had won the election they would be ignoring social improvements for the lower and middle class and instead they would be concentrating on bombing Iran.
I thank goodness every day that Obama is in the white house and cannot think of anyone who could be doing a better job, considering the monumental mess he inherited and the right wing obstructionists.
The financial sector is doing far better than the employment sector.
But I would argue that the brick wall of opposition has come from Wall St. - which has foreclosed every regulatory attempt - even where the Treasury has given consideration to reining in the finance sector.
As a result it is lower and middle classes - the millions of Americans unemployed, foreclosed upon, and without healthcare - that are being made the victims of a crisis they are not responsible for.
And this is happening under President Obama's watch. He could do much more, much more to rein in Wall St. and alter the economic framework to create jobs, and defend the unemployed and foreclosed upon.
The serfs always pay!
And we just THINK we have any power because we can still vote.
Only MegaMoney has any power in this country and around the world. Thus has it always been. Thus will it always be.
So why bother voting? Or even reading these posts or commenting? Maybe we should all be sailing off into the sunset. (Yep, pretty depressed by our lack of representative govt.)