Obama's First Crisis: The Economic Free Fall

After Barack Obama's inspirational address to the adoring minions in Sweet Home Chicago, the loudspeakers erupted with Bruce Springsteen's prayerful post-911 anthem, "The Rising."

Yes, he had risen, but now he has to steer clear of a potential crucifixion on the cross of an economy in free fall.

The sound track to this next chapter of his meteoric elevation might be called "The Reckoning."

It must be said that both parties had denied the primacy of the financial tsunami. Neither political party's convention or platform took much note of our imploding financial system until it could no longer be ignored.

All the talk of tax cuts was a sideshow to the real elephant in the room -- falling markets, growing unemployment, rising inflation, disappearing retirement funds, frozen credit and the crash in consumer demand which is bringing down the auto industry and so many others.

The failures of the Bush Administration, along with, it must be said, both houses of Congress, had enabled this disaster driven by Wall Street greed, regulatory inaction and media avoidance

The crisis gave the Obamacrats the issue they needed to triumph. A campaign that started with a debate over ending the war in Iraq morphed into a referendum on a cataclysmic war on our economic well-being. In the end, once again, it was the economy, stupid.

There is no doubt that our next president realizes he must turn this around. There is no doubt that he also recognizes that unless he does, many of his other goals including tax cuts and health care reforms (not to mention a second term) will go by the wayside. He said as much in his first post-election press conference.

Coming as he does from the land of Lincoln, his message was initially to be one of healing and hope. Honest Abe may be his spiritual grandfather, but now FDR has to become his practical role model. Aspire as he does to the Tao of change, he now has to confront the Dow of reality.

Please realize that the government has been trying to "fix" what's wrong, oh, have they ever, with monetary changes, interest rate cuts and massive infusions of capital. However you regard these "stimulus" measures -- as sincere or a scam -- we know they are not working. Certainly not working for the people who need help the most. Strengthening big banks is not the same as helping the unemployed or millions facing the loss of their homes.

The reckoning that he faces was not one of his making. It is structural, systemic, a product of decades of policies that undermined the social safety net, deepened inequality, kept wages in check and was based on debt. The Economic Policy Institute noted:

For roughly thirty years, with the exception of the late 1990s expansion, there has been little wage growth for the vast majority and increased economic insecurity, primarily related to health care and retirement security. The last business cycle from 2000 to 2007 failed to generate any growth for middle class working families - on average, they lost over $2,000 a year in inflation-adjusted income. .... Our economy has been a huge skimming operation for the well-to-do"

Reversing this may not be easy especially because much of our growth and prosperity was funded with trillions in debt.

As a website in Australian called the Daily Reckoning explained, "eternal verities still apply; Barack Obama is not going to change them. And that means that a slump caused by too much debt cannot be made to disappear. You can disguise it. You can delay it. You can push the losses onto someone else. But you can't escape it."

But that doesn't mean he won't try, and try he is, with an elite team of economic advisors, many from the very industry that caused the problem. Sure you need knowledgeable economists and experienced businessmen and financiers on your side, but you need more than that.

On Friday, he met with this high-powered group even as journalist Doug Ireland observed:

You will note that it is composed entirely of current or former government officials and bureaucrats and corporate types. There is not a single representative of the labor movement, not a single labor economist, not a single representative of progressive or economic watchdog groups, not a single representative of consumers.....guess what kind of economic policies and appointments we'll get out of this crowd!
"

Let's also not forget that many of these wise men and experts did not foresee the crisis as economist James Galbraith (son of the late/great John Kenneth Galbraith who wrote the Great Crash about the depression of the l930's.) revealed in an interview carried on Greg Mankiwi's blog:

But there are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country, and you're saying only two or three of them foresaw the mortgage crisis? Ten or 12 would be closer than two or three. What does that say about the field of economics, which claims to be a science? It's an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.

What will Obama do? For starters, he's moving in a conventional way, a centrist way, surrounding himself with big names to build a consensus for more engaged government interventionism, especially a new simulus package.

Fortune already calls him a CEO-in-chief. (Clearly he's not "palling around with terrorists.) Even McCain's economic advisor says he's impressed. But Fortune wonders as should we, about this all star big-name team asking, "Do they have the answers?

So far the "conventional wisdom" a phrase coined by John F. Galbraith years ago and favored by these hot shots is not working . We need to know how they will they stop foreclosures and create fairness in a lop-sided economy. Is there a plan for debt-relief and a moratorium on excess profiteering and foreclosures? Does he favor wealth distribution? Will his Justice Department prosecute the sub-prime criminals?

The American people can't trust the business leaders who enabled this crisis. Clearly, if "real change" is to come, there will need to be more grass roots, bottom-up activism for economic justice. If you like Obama, if you want him to succeed, make some noise and push him from below because his "advisors" and all the special interests they represent are, sho' nuff, pushing him from above.

News Dissector Danny Schechter, directed the film In Debt We Trust and wrote Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books), available at online bookstores. Comments to [e-mail]

Comments

[Sursum]

I keep wondering about the notion that we have to bail out certain businesses because "they're too big to fail." Maybe we need to limit the size of certain businesses so they don't take down the entire economy if they're managed poorly. Does that make me a socialist?

[Poboy]

Danny,

I'm with you. There are some people who suggest we back up and let Obama, being how smart he is, do the work we elected him to do.

But just as you are stating, and very well, Obama is being counseled from above. So, if the people from below want to be heard, they better raise their voices, because there are crucial decisions being made right now.

[DuganS1]

"Real median household income" is a very misleading statistic.

It doesn't take into account lower taxes. If you use "real disposable income", which is money after paying federal income tax, you'll see strong income gains.

http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/fedstl/dspic96+1

The real median household income number also doesn't include fringe benefits which make up a larger share of pay than ever before.

Plus, the statistic doesn't break out the difference between men and women. The biggest factor over the past 40 years that real median wages have went up at all has been because womens pay has been catching up to mens pay. If you use "real median income for men", men's earnings peaked in 1973 and again in 1979. Men, in fact, made less in real median wages in 2000 than in 1973.

http://z.about.com/d/uspolitics/1/0/3/G/002_female_to_male.png

The "median household income" number also doesn't factor in the number of people per household, which has been going down because families are having fewer kids. If you use median household income per capita, you'll see it is higher than in 2000.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/SL6x3Es_wYI/AAAAAAAAFjo/E2n_J_GbUZE/s1600-h/income2.jpg