Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.If you want to see the video version of this piece, go here.
As Taibbi notes, the new "regulations" -- if we can even use that word -- mean that the largest Wall Street firms now operate under a permanent bailout system. TARP was not a one-time deal; we will soon enter the perma-TARP world, in which the taxpayers will stand behind every move made by the fatcats, no matter how foolish. And the White House will be the sole determiner of whether or not a Wall Street firm is in trouble.
Doesn't Congress have the power of the purse? Not any more, it seems.
Why couldn't we just nationalize the too-big-to-fail firms? Because that would be socialism. So we are making the taxpayers subsidize all future errors made by large private firms. And still Obama is getting the "socialist" rap, even though what he's doing is the exact opposite of socialism as previously defined.
I have one disagreement with Taibbi:
Just below Summers is Jason Furman, who worked for Rubin in the Clinton White House and was one of the first directors of Rubin's Hamilton Project. The appointment of Furman — a persistent advocate of free-trade agreements like NAFTA and the author of droolingly pro-globalization reports with titles like "Walmart: A Progressive Success Story" — provided one of the first clues that Obama had only been posturing when he promised crowds of struggling Midwesterners during the campaign that he would renegotiate NAFTA, which facilitated the flight of blue-collar jobs to other countries. "NAFTA's shortcomings were evident when signed, and we must now amend the agreement to fix them," Obama declared. A few months after hiring Furman to help shape its economic policy, however, the White House quietly quashed any talk of renegotiating the trade deal."One of the first clues..."? Nah. Cannonfire readers were clued in to Obama's hypocrisy on that score long before the primaries were decided. Dammit, why wouldn't anyone listen to us?
10 comments:
Taibbi still doesn't get it.
"Sell-out" implies that Obama was once on our side.
For anyone who read and researched who gave the most money to Obama's campaigns via opensecrets.org, none of this is a surprise. Obama as President is simply dancing with the one(s) that brung him.
Matt T is a joke. Good to see he's fixed some -- only some -- of the problems with his video work. His work is shoddy. I see he's added a paragraph since Rebecca Winters took him to the woodshed.
http://sexandpoliticsandscreedsandattitude.blogspot.com/2009/12/debra-sweet-tells-truth-guess-who-lies.html
But you can still seem him whining, in the video, that Gosbee and Kornblut are out. The aren't out and they aren't progressive and I'm shocked that the great Joe Cannon, not sarcasm on my part, would refrain from calling Matt T out for praising A. Gosbee as a "progressive."
Matt T. doesn't know what he's talking about. He just spews anger and hopes it makes sense. But he's a political idiot. And it shows.
Since Rubin and Furman worked for Bill Clinton does that mean Obama is continuing his policies?
If that's the case would Hillary in the White house be doing anything different?
Jimmy, I can do the adhominem thing as well as anyone. But you have not refuted any facts, assertions or arguments.
The treatment of Goolsbee did bug me, but not the rest.
Matt effin' TAIBBI!? You've got to be kidding me.
Bostonboomer added the Taibbi link to the comments section of her "Friday Morning News & Views" post, and the commenters were unanimous in their loathing of that POS. This one by "plural" at 11:31 was especially interesting:
"Taibbi has been making a career of blaming Bill Clinton for Bush’s economic failures.
That piece is full of misrepresentations and irrelevancies.
For example, Goolsbee, his big hero, was the person who told the Canadians not to listen to Obama’s anti-trade rhetoric during the campaign.
And Jamie Rubin is no economics expert, not even close. He’s been a diplomat all along, an international affairs expert. And he is a good Hillary supporter, but he’s not in the government now at all.
And he is not Bob Rubin’s son.
Taibbi needs a fact checker, amidst all his innuendo and blame shifting."
Joe, I like Matt's writing, too, but he's coming up zip on delivering the stealth heads pulling O's strings. All ass kissing aside, your writing, IMO, is far more amusing, polished AND insightful.
Jimmy, You know what you speak.Nice call on Goolsbee.
MrMike, Your Q. about Hillary? A. NO.
Hillary may be much smarter and experienced than O but she is wedded even MORE bigtime than him to Big Money, and unfortunately directs her wits and wiles into bad US labor and trade policies that are hurting everyone in the country except a few elites. (I really wish she'd cut that out.) W
Taibbi worship? Meh. False journo prophetty stuff. At least he's cute.
Matt's latest is yet another magician's trick to tumble out of Rolling Stone's hat. He excels at having the plebs look left while the mice play right.
Sure, there's some skunky badasses on Wall Street that gotta go, and Matt's having a blast unloading on the sacrificial lambs. But this was and IS predictable. But he's not telling us the who/wheres about the stealth looting going down, you know, all the cool dudes and the groupthink.
When is Matt going to tell us who is pulling Obama's strings? Sleight of hand, this article. Wall Street = BAD, Hollywood and Technology sycophant land = GOOD. Follow the bffs, you know?
Matt Taibbi is the latest golden boy on the hip bread and circus show.
*Look at the shiny object* and all that.
It is always the Clintons fault.... What I don't understand is how the economy managed to flourish under their evil influence???
CanNonfire: "Jimmy, I can do the adhominem thing as well as anyone. But you have not refuted any facts, assertions or arguments."
Joe, I don't think you read the link. Matt T talked about his big article in the video. He didn't know what he was talking about. Watch the video, then read the article and you'll see he's basically added one paragraph -- which reads just like what Rebecca wrote -- to his article.
I provided a link to Rebecca Winters' post from last week where she explained how he was wrong. He states in the video that Barack dumped Austin and the woman and calls them progressives.
No such thing happened and they are progressives.
Rebecca's post that I linked to quotes him and factually refutes him. For his article, he's spitting out her information about the jobs the 2 serve in the administration. In the video, he had no clue.
He didn't know what he was talking about and only after he was corrected did he even get that both people are still in the administration. So in his paragraph in the article, he lies that they're in 'Siberia' equivalent. No, they're not. They're exactly where they want to be and in powerful positions.
He got fact-checked by Rebecca last week. I provided the link. I'm failing to see how this is confusing unless you haven't had time yet for the video. If I'm not clear in what I'm stating and it's me, leave a note or e-mail me at jimmyfwest@yahoo.com. Not trying to be difficult just thought I'd established this already.
Memo to Matt: Jamie Rubin is NOT Bob Rubin's son - he belongs to publisher Harvey Rubin.
Aren't *real* journalists required to fact-check these days? Guess this is what ACCESS delivers.
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