August 30, 2010
It’s coming from everywhere. House Minority Leader, John “BronzeGel” Boehner, while giving a speech in Cleveland on August 24, called for the ouster of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as well as the removal of National Economic Council Director, Larry Summers. Bridget Johnson reported for The Hill that on August 28, Representative Tom Price (R-Georgia) echoed the call for Geithner and Summers to step down: “They need to resign because the policies that they’re putting in place are not being effective.”
An editorial from the Republican-oriented Investors Business Daily expanded on Boehner’s criticism of the duo, without really giving any specific examples of what Geithner or Summers did wrong. That’s because what they did wrong was to protect the banks at the expense of the taxpayers — the same thing a Republican administration would have done. As a result, there have been simultaneous calls from the left for the sacking of Geithner and Summers. Robert Scheer wrote a piece for The Nation entitled, “They Go or Obama Goes”. Here is some of what he said:
It is Obama’s continued deference to the sensibilities of the financiers and his relative indifference to the suffering of ordinary people that threaten his legacy, not to mention the nation’s economic well-being.
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While Obama continued the Bush practice of showering the banks with bailout money, he did not demand a moratorium on foreclosures or call for increasing the power of bankruptcy courts to force the banks, which created the problem, to now help distressed homeowners.
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There is no way that Obama can begin to seriously reverse this course without shedding the economic team led by the Clinton-era “experts” like Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner who got us into this mess in the first place.
Economist Randall Wray wrote a great piece for Wall Street Pit entitled, “Boehner Gets One Right: Fire Obama’s Economics Team”. Professor Wray distinguished his argument from Boehner’s theme that because neither Geithner nor Summers ever ran a business, they don’t know how to create jobs:
Obama’s economics team doesn’t care about job creation. (here) So far, nearly three years into the worst depression since the Great Depression, they’ve yet to turn any serious attention to Main Street. The health of Wall Street still consumes almost all of their time — and almost all government funds. Trillions for Wall Street, not even peanuts for Americans losing their jobs and homes. No one, except a highly compensated Wall Street trader, could possibly disagree with Boehner. Fire Timmy and Larry and the rest of the Government Sachs team.
As an aside: If you take offense at Professor Wray’s suggestion that the government should get actively involved in job creation, be sure to watch the interview with economist Robert Shiller by Simon Constable of The Wall Street Journal.
The Zero Hedge website recently published an essay by Michael Krieger of KAM LP. One of Krieger’s points, which resonated with me, was the idea that whether you have a Democratic administration or a Republican administration, both parties are beholden to the financial elites, so there’s not much room for any “change you can believe in”:
. . . the election of Obama has proven to everyone watching with an unbiased eye that no matter who the President is they continue to prop up an elite at the top that has been running things into the ground for years. The appointment of Larry Summers and Tiny Turbo-Tax Timmy Geithner provided the most obvious sign that something was seriously not kosher. Then there was the reappointment of Ben Bernanke. While the Republicans like to simplify him as merely a socialist he represents something far worse.
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What Obama has attempted to do is to wipe a complete economic collapse under the rug and maintain the status quo so that the current elite class in the United States remains in control. The “people” see this ploy and are furious. Those that screwed up the United States economy should never make another important decision about it yet they remain firmly in control of policy. The important thing in any functioning democracy is the turnover of the elite class every now and again. Yet, EVERY single government policy has been geared to keeping that class in power and to pass legislation that gives the Federal government more power to then buttress this power structure down the road. This is why Obama is so unpopular. Everything else is just noise to keep people divided and distracted.
“Keeping people divided and distracted” helps preserve the illusion that there really is a difference between the economic policies of the two parties. If you take a close look at how President Obama’s Deficit Commission is attempting to place the cost of deficit reduction on the backs of working people, the unified advocacy for the financial sector becomes obvious. What we are left with are the fights over abortion and gay marriage to differentiate the two parties from each other.
It’s time to pay more attention to that man behind the curtain.
Fighting The Old War
September 30, 2010
The New York Times recently ran a story about Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to support the campaigns of centrist Republicans out of concern that the election of “Tea Party” – backed candidates was pushing the Republican Party to the extreme right. The article by Michael Barbaro began this way:
Although it’s nice to see Mayor Bloomberg take a stand in support of centrism, I believe he is going about it the wrong way. There are almost as many different motives driving people to the Tea Party movement as there are attendees at any given Tea Party event. Although the movement is usually described as a far-right-wing fringe phenomenon, reporters who have attended the rallies and talked to the people found a more diverse group. Consider the observations made by True Slant’s David Masciotra, who attended a Tea Party rally in Valparaiso, Indiana back on April 14:
My pet theory is that the rise of the Tea Party movement is just the first signal indicating the demise of the so-called “two-party system”. I expect this to happen as voters begin to face up to the fact that the differences between Democratic and Republican policies are subtle when compared to the parties’ united front with lobbyists and corporations in trampling the interests of individual citizens. On July 26, I wrote a piece entitled, “The War On YOU”, discussing the battle waged by “our one-party system, controlled by the Republi-cratic Corporatist Party”. On August 30, I made note of a recent essay at the Zero Hedge website, written by Michael Krieger of KAM LP. One of Krieger’s points, which resonated with me, was the idea that whether you have a Democratic administration or a Republican administration, both parties are beholden to the financial elites, so there’s not much room for any “change you can believe in”:
Barry Ritholtz, publisher of The Big Picture website, recently wrote a piece focused on how the old Left vs. Right paradigm has become obsolete. He explained that the current power struggle taking place in Washington (and everywhere else) is the battle of corporations against individuals:
Barry Ritholtz concluded with the statement:
I couldn’t agree more. Beyond that, I believe that politicians who continue to champion the old Left vs. Right war will find themselves in the dust as those leaders representing the interests of human citizens rather than corporate interests win the support and enthusiasm of the electorate. Similarly, those news and commentary outlets failing to adapt to this changing milieu will no longer have a significant following. It will be interesting to see who adjusts.
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