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Mr. Axelrod, Please Protect the Prez From Geithner and Summers
They ran such a supremely pragmatic and logical campaign that the way the administration is now handling this banking crisis continues to baffle. While they have touted a new era of openness -- literally opening the doors of the White House to the public on the day of the inauguration -- they suddenly clam up when a dream team of the most-respected economists in the nation point out glaring and seemingly avoidable flaws in their bank rescue package.
The campaign bragged that it was winning the White House from the bottom up, from the people to Washington. Why now espouse a plan to rescue our economy from the oligarchs on down? From hedge funds and private equity to the rest of us?
Even if you thought it might work (or might be the only thing Congress would approve so you pre-compromised with yourself), it makes little political sense. If the outside experts are right and the plan turns out to be too complicated, opaque and indirect to get money moving again the failure will sink the chances of passing ambitious social packages like health care reform.
However if it does work then Summers' $5.2 million pay day for working one day a week last year will look like lunch money compared to the tax-payer supported profits Wall Street will devour for managing the toxic assets.
And we regular folks are gonna be mightily pissed.
An idea that would mitigate the coming popular rage was floated by Ronald O'Hanley in the Times last week. A Wall Street insider himself his idea was to let we, the rabble, buy in on the toxic assets. Like War Bond during WWII the rest of us could both help our nation out of this rut and maybe make enough profit to start spending again (I personally have my eye on a WaveRunner once this Recession ends). Even if we didn't get in on the plan ourselves, knowing that we could have will blunt our anger at the barons who did.
David Axelrod is a brilliant tactician He must know better. He needs to jump up and down on some desks until they fix this leak in the most-promising ship of state this nation has seen since Kennedy's.
4 Myths About the Obama-Geithner Bailout Plan - Rick Newman ...
Geithner Sets Out Sweeping Overhaul to Bank Bailout - NYTimes.com
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Yeah, let everyone in on the greed, again!
The American people understand the balance that Obama has attained. Most feel that this team will solve the crisis and thus all of those against the president lose all credibility. On the economy, no less, an area the republicans feel they should own. The polls reflect this opportunity. Just because Obama does not support a European system or extreme fiscal positions, his fiscally moderate and socially liberal stance will carry him into history as one of the best presidents ever.
If we keep our wits about ourselves, this could mark the death knoll of the republicans.
This isn't a little war between two like minded groups - The Republicans and the Democrats. This is a real financial crises that has left people living in tents, not having food - people in dire pain. "Death knoll of the republicans"
Grow up. What we are seeing is that Americans have fallen for the lies that politicians have put before them - that the two parties are different.
Look who has been in economic power for all these years and created this mess. It is Obama's appointees - Paul Volckner who changed the FED from being independent to being the supporter of the banks in the fall of 1979. Lawrence Summers with his long history of deregulation. Timothy Geithner who has been a failure in everthing except being a pawn for big banking.
I don't give a sh*t about Republican and Democrat. I want a voice for the American people.
Well, then almost 70% of all Americans also have something saved, like a 401k or living on a small pension. What about them? Joining together means supporting this President, the 30% have nots and the 69% have something. The top 1% is who the republicans support anyhow.
Please grow up as well. Since it was the Republicans who have a 30% hard core base that blew up the system.
The political imperative is at least as strong the economic one to rein in the power of finance in the US. It is VERY apparent now that they wield a dangerous level of political power. The fact that they are now referred to as our oligarchs is telling.
Obama and Axelrod knew whom they were appointing. They wanted Geithner and Summers. That is the scary thing. They did not want someone sitting in the room who had experience but a different opinion. Take just one example, Jeffrey Sachs. Although I am concerned about some of what he has done in the past, he still would have a much different opion than Obama, Axelrod, Geithner and Summers. In 2000 Sachs said "Yes, in my view, Keynes was the greatest political economist of the 20th century. And perhaps what I would call the greatest clinical economist of all time in being able to read the real situation, the real diagnostics of an economic and political crisis." I don't think we will hear that from Axelrod, or Obama, or Geither or Summers.
Why should Axelrod want matters any different?
I find it distrubing that someone - Axelrod - who has moved around in the realms of the financial world and who had to know for yonks that things had been beyond toxic didn't show any obvious dissent concerning the appointment of Geithner and Summers.
The status quo suits too many of Obama's economic team. Not good.
Excellent article Mr. Ellis. It corroborates my gut feelings about what is happening. However, I am deeply puzzled by President Obama's choices to clean out the stables. I can only surmise that as a successful man, even before the presidency, he relates to similar men, but cannot seem to move in the direction of looking outside Wall Street and the beltway for direction. Perhaps he is afraid of moving leftward since that is where the truly intelligent economic thinkers are and until he does, chaos will continue to ensue. That is the only possibility for change and he is not up to the challenge.
FDR was surrounded by very liberal and open minded people who were given free rein in dealing with a similar calamity and who created many fine projects, many of which have been whittled away since those days.
Unfortunately, the most poisonous aspects of our capitalistic culture have infiltrated our economic system and it requires real courage and commitment to change course. I worry about my grandchildren's future as this catastrophe will go on for a long while and I also grieve for the jobless and homeless increasing daily in our country. I am old enough to remember the atmosphere of the Great Depression and the affect it had on my family and am finding it emotionally difficult to live through a similar period in our nation's history.
How incredibly frustrating this all has been. And so disappointing that Obama doesn't think that more and more Americans, especially those of us on the left don't see through his coziing up to the banksters.
I would never have expected this from Obama.
He thinks he's safe because rethugs aren't attacking him over any of this because he's doing what THEY would be doing. Enough? Remember when he so remonstrably said "enough"?
Makes you wonder what the hell was he talking about when he comes in and acts like another George Bush, doing what the rich elite want him to, while he runs over the working class and spends all their money like it's nothing.
.
For those of you who missed seeing Bill Moyer's Journal on PBS last week, you might want to check out his interview with William Black- it's very germane to this article: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html
Excuse me, didn't Obama choose Summers and Geithner?
Isn't Obama their boss?
Doesn't Obama have an independent capability to make decisions?
Axelrod doesn't need to protect Obama from Summers and Geithner, they are executing his strategy.
the guys who helped create the mess should not be allowed to clean it up
The Progressives Important Speech
can't listen to the whole thing start at 07:30
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=250484071737892106&ei=qenbSeGvGpKurgKWq528Dg&q
I'm with you Trey. We need someone to get Obama's ear.
Thia issue is too important and everything else we want Obama to accomplish hinges on the success of these economic fixes.
I wish the media would approach the economic crisis with the same fervor they had after 9/11. I'd like to see the media sponsor a debate among leading economist from both sides of the issue -- those who think Geithner and Summers are on the wrong track against those who believe they are on the right track. We don't have the kind of emphasis we need in terms of helping the public understand the situation and understand our options. It's our money and we don't know shi%.
Obama received quite a dear amount from these bankers. I've been calling out Obama for over a year now and no one would listen. Go to OpenSecrets.org. I mean, for people to think of him as somehow "progressive" after his speech at AIPAC, they're either willfully deaf or just retarded. For a man who preaches he wants to "reset" relations with the Islamic world to go out of his way to say that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel... should we be surprised that Obama is behaving just like Bush in so many ways?
I'm not surprised. Again, I've been telling this people for well over a year and shouted down repeatedly, particularly on this website which seems so adamant this man get elected.
The media, and even this website, turned the GOP into either the butt of a joke or the epitome of Evil yet the Democrats have proved to be no better than the GOP. In some ways, they could possibly be worse by instilling a sense of "inevitability" and the game being fixed (which it is, if you haven't noticed).
Mr. Ellis, I , like you have become concerned about our President buying into the restoration of Wall Street As Usual. The high finance crowd around our President wants to "reboot" the old model with a modicum of a "new transparency." The free market ain't free, and we are paying dearly for the mythology. The social programs that our President supports, as I, are D.O.A. due to lack of revenue.
The buck stops with the President ...plain and simple. He knows exactly what hes doing and that is why he hired them. End of story.
So, when it is clear that he totally screwed up our economy and robbed the taxpayers blind to pay off the rich banksters, you are good with that? I don't know. I think it comes down to holding people accountable even after they are elected. I was under the perhaps faulty impression that Obama wanted a positive legacy. Right now, it seems to me that he is busy paying off his campaign debts to the rich and telling his small donors to go p*ss up a rope.
sadly it is NOT the end of the story. If Obama doesn't understand that accounting tricks (financial innovation) will not get us out of this mess, then the story is liable continue for 10 years or more.
Same old Washington cliques and buddy system..No change. The rich get richer, and those of us in the hinterland struggle to make ends meet. It's getting more disgusting by the day.
Axelrod is an ad man. He knows how to sell.
Sell out?
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