On Tuesday, I received yet another deceptively personal e-mail addressed to "Robert" from Michelle Obama asking me once again to contribute to the "amazing journey" toward "progress" that her husband has led.
"Fool me once," I muttered, regretful of my previous contribution and even embarrassed to wear the artist-designed Obama for President T-shirt that I got in return. I was particularly annoyed by the first lady's assurance that "You're the reason we reined in Wall Street banks that were out of control," since I have written a book and numerous articles asserting just the opposite.
I envy her blind spousal loyalty -- my own mate is a bit less forgiving -- but how in the world can she, or the hacks that ginned out this e-mail to millions on her behalf, make such an assertion without sensing the absurd? Surely she knows that this administration has thrown trillions at the banks in the wan hope that they would respond with increased liquidity and mortgage relief to improve the lot of struggling homeowners and the unemployed, who have received nothing in return.
There are 50 million Americans who have either lost their homes or are "underwater" on their mortgages, and unemployment is stuck at close to 10 percent. The real number, which includes those who have given up looking for work, or who have been forced to take crummy jobs well below their skill set, is at least double.
But the official number is high enough to shock Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. "In the last several months I've stared at our unemployment forecast and come to the conclusion that it's just not coming down nearly as quickly as it should," he told the Wall Street Journal on Monday, adding, "This is a far grimmer picture than we ought to have." Pretty grim when you add the fact that there is now an all-time high of 43 million Americans living in poverty while Wall Street salaries and bonuses grow fatter.
Evans expressed a widespread concern over the developing "liquidity trap" in which the banks that have been saved from a disaster of their own making nonetheless refuse to lend as the president had hoped, and industries that have been made more secure through access to cheap money induced by the Fed don't invest and rehire.
As for reining in the banks with his semblance of regulation over the out-of-control derivatives market that caused the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the president admitted in an interview published in Rolling Stone last month that "People have legitimate concerns that if the rules drafted by all these various agencies in charge of implementing financial reform wind up with exceptions that are so big you can drive a truck through ... you could end up with an inadequate regulatory structure."
That's exactly what will happen once the lobbyists get through working their buddies in the regulatory agencies. Obama made light of the concern expressed by Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner that "when it comes to financial reform ... your economic team is closely identified with Wall Street and the deregulation that caused the collapse ... [M]any of them worked for or were close to banks like Goldman Sachs." In response, Obama observed, "Larry Summers didn't work for Goldman Sachs," which ignores the fact that Summers was paid almost $8 million by Wall Street firms while he was an adviser to candidate Obama -- including one $135,000 lecture fee from Goldman.
Goldman alums and others from Wall Street hold key economic positions throughout the Obama administration. That includes former Goldman partner Gary Gensler, whom Obama selected to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has the key responsibility for derivatives regulation. In the Clinton administration it was Gensler as treasury undersecretary, along with his then-boss Summers, who led the fight against the regulation of derivatives and swaps.
His insistence that "swap transactions should not be regulated" under the existing Commodity Exchange Act was made law when President Bill Clinton signed off on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, preventing any regulation of the toxic mortgages that the Fed is now stuck with.
The "no banker left behind program," initiated by George W. Bush and continued by Obama, got a big boost Tuesday when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke committed to adding to the more than $2 trillion in toxic derivatives assets that the Fed has already bought from the banks. Once again the suffering of homeowners is ignored while the bankers who fleeced them are made whole.
Until progressives break with Obama's rosy perceptions, they will have nothing to offer as a retort to the tea-party faux populists who are effectively monopolizing the legitimate rage over the bailouts that have spread like wildfire throughout the land.
Isn't it amazing that the same "bidniss" crowd that want's the gummint out of their business -- but complain that the gummint isn't doing enough about jobs. Since when is the government supposed to create jobs in the private sector?! The corporations are sitting on trillions of bucks, we're told, why in hell aren't THEY creating jobs? And why aren't the right wingnuts complaining about THAT?!
God and Republicans work in mysterious ways. Especially Republicans.
Can you imagine the mess we'll be in if they gain a majority? Or if McCain/Palin had won? (What could McCain have been thinking?)
Uh, well, a great many of us have ALREADY broken with Obama, not just his rosy perceptions.
We see articles about this here on HP somewhat regularly these days.....
My mind boggles at the idea of the extreme wing of the party supported by and voted for by the incompetent, gambling bankers can possibly be "monopolizing the legitimate rage over the bailouts" Surely even your most bigotted and purblind Republican supporters can't fail to understand that its more than a little absurd for the perpetrators to be leading the attack on themselves ?
The President has damaged my confidence in his leadership by placating Pachyderms and dissing his base. He should've FOUGHT for single-payer. Instead he took it off the table before the health care debate even got started and we ended up even without a public option. He should've gotten us all the way out of Iraq by now and most of the way out of Afghanistan. Instead we've still got 50,000 troops in Iraq and about 100,000 in Afghanistan. That's not "Change we can believe in," it's politics as usual.
I am sick of these critics, who actually do NOT know - what to do in cases they dare to criticize.
Sounds like it is Obama’s fault, that Mercedes costs above my abilities to pay for it .
So I should sit and write a book, how bad is it and collect(?) cash for selling it.
But someone else would say – that book costs too much for the content and it is Obama’s fault…
And that someone will sit and write… a book why does he think so…
And try to sell …
Should I continue?
I am really sick of these bookish critics who could not see reality from their desks.
****
who was that this time?
Robert Who?
Face The Truth, or, can't you handle the truth?
Oh, I'll grant you that Obama is WAY better than McCain, but that's not saying much.
It will soon be quite clear what a paper tiger this so called finacial reform bill is. Expect business as usual, only more of it at an accelerated pace. The health bill will no doubt be full nooks and crannies for AmeriCorp to take advantage of.
For those of you who want to parrot the idea that we have gotten all the money back, bear in mind that Bailout Ben opened a special money chute at the Fed just for these clowns. I don't see how borrowing trillions (at 0% interest) then transfering it to back to where it came from isn't really repayment, it's more like the old Pecos Pete story about taking the same 20 cows and running them around a hill 10 times so he could sell 200. These guys are using the same kind of accounting that led to this mess. And they wouldn't have this much if they could have claimed their bonus money w/o it.
All of these "banks" are completely insolvent. Expect another crash and burn.