The Wall Street occupiers' withering knock at corporate and financial greed, manipulation and corruption is much deserved. Their knock at former President Bush and Congress for giving Wall Street financial houses the taxpayers' open checkbook to bail them out with virtually no requirement that they in turn bail out distressed homeowners and struggling businesses is much deserved. Their knock at government regulators for not imposing new tough regulatory rules on Wall Street to end obscene CEO payouts and their manipulative, casino-type investments and speculation and profiteering is much deserved.
Their knock at President Obama for somehow being complicit in Wall Street's greed, recklessness and insensitivity is not deserved. Yet there were the shouts that Obama is Bush and the signs assailing him sprinkled throughout the throng that are battering Wall Street. The case against Obama for aiding and abetting Wall Street mostly hinges on the cast of administration officials surrounding him that have deep ties to Wall Street, his failure to push for a financial reform law with the sharpest teeth, and that he did not make like FDR and launch a massive reconstruction program to save homes and put millions of Americans back to work.
The plain and simple truth is that he did what he could within the tight constraints of the system, political reality and the times. The mild and admittedly compromised financial reform law was hectored, nitpicked, and watered down by the usual suspects, Wall Street lobbyists, paid flaks, conservative columnists, bloggers and talk radio hosts, GOP congressional leaders, and key Democrats. The votes and the sentiment within the power center of Congress for the type of hard-nosed financial reforms that are desperately needed, were initially proposed and fought for by Obama, weren't there. The choice was get the best deal possible which included a first ever consumer watchdog agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or come away empty-handed. This would have slammed the door tight on a renewed push for stronger reforms down the line. Despite its glaring shortcomings, the Dodd-Frank financial reform law at least opened the door for the future. Nothing remotely close to that would have been forthcoming without Obama's handprint on it.
Expecting Obama to be the second coming of FDR ignores both the times and the forces arrayed against him. FDR was not relentlessly baited by a wide segment of Americans as a closet socialist and his economic policies lambasted as hamstringing and wrecking the private sector BEFORE he took office. Obama was pilloried, assailed, and harangued with that scare tactic and scare labels from the moment he declared that he was a presidential candidate. The hysteria that he got and still gets from GOP leaders, officials, voters and a significant number of conservative and even moderate independents would have been tame stuff compared to what he would have gotten if he vigorously pushed for a massive government spending program on jobs, small business loans and aid to distressed homeowners.
FDR took the reins when one out three Americans was unemployed and the stock market, the banks and major industry had collapsed. The GOP was ridiculed and discredited. The labor movement was on the ascendancy, the until-then small and totally marginalized Communist Party was getting a hearing from many down and out unemployed workers. The major financiers and industrialists genuinely feared social upheaval, even revolution. The horror of creating deficits by government spending and a drumbeat media echo chamber to turn the airwaves (there were no TV networks) into an electronic bully pulpit to badger, hector, harangue and pillory FDR at every turn for spending too much didn't exist. There was an actual government surplus then, and no major debt. FDR in effect had a public and congressional mandate to take drastic action. Obama never had that luxury and all of the liabilities that FDR did not have.
The crisis of Wall Street greed and manipulation is a product of the rush to deregulate, fine-tuned and expanded by Republican and Democratic presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and of course George W. Bush; the lax to non-existent enforcement of the regulations on the book punishing fraud; manipulation and profiteering by the alphabet government regulatory agencies; a Congress that received huge chunks of money from Wall Street and became a passionate watchdog protecting its interests; a media that routinely ignored, covered up, and apologized for the worst Wall Street abuses; and a complacent public that dozed while Wall Street took it to the cleaners.
To dump blame on Obama for not rising above the sordid history of Wall Street greed and abuse aided and abetted by successive presidents and Congress ignores, confuses, and disparages what Obama tried to do, what he was able to do, and what was impossible to do. Obama doesn't deserve that.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/earlhutchinson
Why don't some of you posting here get yourselves educated on how your political system works.
For starters, there is The House; The Senate and the Executive Branch. It is a system that stinks and nothing gets done.
The Parliamentary system works much better.
Quote:
“There was an actual government surplus then, and no major debt. FDR in effect had a public and congressional mandate to take drastic action. Obama never had that luxury and all of the liabilities that FDR did not have.”
FDR did not have to contend with the kind of rightist political machine of today with the multi-billion dollar slush funds and multi thousand high paid lobbyists we have today. In 1932 the crisis was so severe that the former Republican congressional majorities had been extinguished. It is miraculous that Obama, faced with the rightist machine that we have today could have succeeded in the adoption of “Obamney Care” and the rescue of the US auto industry, etc. etc
By the late 1970’s, the income share of the richest 10 % of Americans had risen to 50 %, the equivalent of the 1920’s. So now the tinder is getting closer to the fire. The current street demonstrations may lack specific demands and huge numbers of participants but it is certainly an omen of coming events. There comes a time when inequality becomes so gross that it reaches a breaking point.
In my last paragraph: stike "By the late 1970's" and insert "By 2007, the income - - -- -- :
For his behavior in this banking SCANDAL and his Justice Dept.'s inability to prosecute the crooks on Wall Street, Obama should be impeached and Holder should be forced to resign.
Both have failed their country and abused the public trust which in a democracy is sacred.
Their putting pressure on the states' attorneys to settle with the crooks should be widely condemned by all, including you Earl.
By the way, I have read you for a while now.
You have come full circle, from being ridiculous, to being sensible, to being ridiculous again.
Every single one.
Obama is complicit. Obama is up to his eyeballs in the Wall Street Scam against ordinary Americans.
In 2008, Obama accepted more money from Wall Street financiers than any candidate in US election history. Money was funneled from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP MOrgan, MS, Citi, etc directly to Obama's campaign coffers, in record amounts.
In the last three years, Obama has miraculously refused to indict or prosecute even ONE of the financiers who have skimmed billions from the taxpayer bailouts of these firms.
No free pass for Obama this time. Obama is complicit, and must be held accountable.
WHICH financier skimmed billions from the taxpayers? I bet you cant name ONE...
What Obama is responsible for is the continued complicity in the coverup of the banksters behavior.
Ongoing refusal to actively investigate.
Settlement with Mozilo instead of pursuing jail sentence.
Settlement after settlement - with the corporations fined, stockholders paying - and the executives forgiven.
Changing accounting rules to help cover up their fraud.
At each and every step the apparent choice of the Obama administration has been to actively join in a coverup of their behaviors.
Hiring Wall Streeters for staff and advisors.
Obama, Geithner and all of them quite obviously seek to protect the bankers.
Over the interests of the average American - the 99%.
And, that criticism is fair.
The fault lies with an element in Congress that will do anything to make him look bad, ineffectual and incompetent. That element will go to any length including hurting our Country and its citizen who elected them to do a job for the majority not the 1%.
It is not a BLAME game, it is an immediate repair game at first with temporary measures to create relief and buy the time to begin the long term recovery. None of what will happen without a Congress willing to work for America not special interest.
Vote in 2012, send a message to Congress that since you won't do the job we elected you to do for America, we will replace you with those who will. In the meantime if you think you have a better idea of how to prioritize and fix the mess Obama inherited please send it to him and to Congress.
If that is your ideology then you need to take some time to direct your computer research to the power of the President, and the other two parts of government and focus on Congress.
Before we can get to justice on Wall Street we need to create jobs, and renew the revenue steam so the economy can stabilize. The constant attack on the EPA, that would cost jobs, the mandate to distract from the priorities by attacks on Social Security and Medicare and continuation of the Bush Tax Cuts are distractions from the issues which the President has tried to maintain a focus on.
If you want to see reforms then educate and plan to vote for as many new people as we can to Congress. Vote a Congress that can work together for America, not big business and ignorant ideology.
Those AREN'T small things.
Any of them done?
But he didn't do either.
It was an election point for all candidates, and being "tough on terrorism" is the paradigm that we only just now have come to realize that is something that we ourselves created through our oppression of those who attack us. Now we the people want to act all holier than thou, now that were in a quagmire.
But I do agree that there are plenty of real issues that the President should be taken to task on. But in doing so, we seriously need to realize that we could have avoided the worst of it had we bothered to get his back on all of the issues we say we voted for. I personally logged thousands of hours researching, sharing, and debating them. I personally watched the media re-direct each issue into insignificance, while the so-called progressives, democrats, independents etc sat on their proverbial asses on all of them except Single-Payer.
He begged us to assist. We abandoned our responsibility, he underestimated how committed we were, and now realize that we 'should' have been occupying everything THEN! But Obama could have vetoed some things, fought for Elizabeth Warren, Used his bully Pulpit, executive privilege, and ability to articulate the issues in all their horrific glory, to circumvent Fox/ mainstream media lies, and raise truth to the level he did in the Reverend Wright speech. Especially after the "No Votes" on everything.