For years, I’ve had readers tell me I “have a problem” with Obama. Yeah, the problem I have is that I don’t think he’s very good at his job:
Mr. Geithner says he wanted to do what was right: consolidate the banking and securities regulators and plug holes in the system. But the president’s advisers seem to compete to see who can bow more quickly to what they perceive as the political realities of the moment.
What Mr. Geithner instead demonstrates in his book is that the White House misread the politics to focus on killing bold action. For example, Senator Blanche Lincoln, Democrat of Arkansas, facing attacks from a primary challenger that she was too friendly to the banks, proposed strict restrictions on tough derivatives. Mr. Geithner and the Obama administration scoffed at her plan, without recognizing that the politics were friendly to a more aggressive tack than they thought possible.
Another Democrat, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, was holding out on financial reform from the left. Instead of seeking to placate him with progressive proposals, the White House and the congressional leaders scrambled to secure the vote of Scott Brown, the suddenly elected Republican from Massachusetts. Mr. Brown could have scuttled financial reform, but instead he was eager to embrace it, a sign of where the politics of the moment really were.
Presidents aren’t all powerful and cannot change things by force of will. But Mr. Obama could have set an initial reform agenda with sweep. Some advocated it in his administration. President Obama had immense political capital in 2009 and majorities in Congress. The inevitably compromised legislative process would have chipped away at a larger mountain. Instead it reduced a hill to a hillock.
Go read it all, it’s good.
Hello All:
I agree with you, Susie, that the President has not been exactly shit-hot when it comes to the subject of policing Wall Street and/or fixing the economy.
When Obama came into office, he was presented with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to right the egregious wrongs that had been initiated in the the years of Saint Ronnie, and which were radically accelerated upon the repeal of Glass-Steagall. (Thanks, Clinton. etal.) Instead, Obama chose to sign on to Hank Paulson and Timmy Geithner’s Wall Street bank bailout scheme (complete with a status quo, derp economic team to help him along), thus ultimately making those (already) gargantuan, manifestly criminal entities even larger and more dangerous than they were in 2008. There was ample precedent to which one might refer as a roadmap on how to systematically investigate, indict and convict principals, and subsequently break the banks into smaller (and hence) manageable pieces. (See S & L crisis of the 80’s. Was this crisis larger? Of course. Was it possible to apply basically the same formula? That’s true, too.)
Had Obama taken this action, in conjunction with advancing a full-blown infrastructure restoration program (in the several $Trillion range, and not larded up with demonstrably non-productive tax cuts), he could have been reelected without even sending out a postcard. Further, gangsters like Timmy Geithner, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein and their fellow-travelers would be serving hard time in a maximum security federal penitentiary. Instead, the President decided to burn significant capital on implementing a decidedly insurance company-friendly healthcare plan. The order of priorities was flipped upside down – at best.
Conclusion: If Hillary is going to run, then we need a Bernie Sanders to push the conversation from the center-right (which is where it will most certainly reside) and hard over to the left – which is where the vast majority of Americans are…even if they’re too ill-informed to know it.
As an aside, I highly recommend Nomi Prins’ new book, “All the Presidents’ Bankers.”
OK, I’ll shut up now.
Pushing the conversation to the Left is a fools errand if the end result is the election of Clinton. Electing Bernie Sanders president is how the conversation is actually going to shift to the Left. Obama has taken his cues…..all of them…..from Wall Street. Wall Street tried to break Putin financially. What did Putin do? He made a $400 billion dollar gas deal with China. The lesson here is that “money talks and bullshit walks.” We must break the stranglehold that the billionaires of Wall Street have on our government. We won’t do that by electing another Clinton. Or another Obama-like Democrat. Or anyone who once was or still is an elected Washington official.
So why the fug didn’t Timmy boy come out loud and clear and say so at the time and hand in his resignation if Obama didn’t regulate the regulators. These book deals that they do when they leave that give them huge advances and end up at the thrift stores are the reason they have tight lips so as to have continued access to “power” which is what they call this testosterone parade in DC. And some of the women thought of as women are really gendered masculine and masquerading as women.(Judith Butler/Lacan)
“Some women……are really gendered masculine…” In which case they can’t be trusted because they’re not real women. Is that what you’re saying? Or are you condemning the fact that for at least 3000 years the masculine gene has dominated society? That it’s time to bring back balance? Have men show their feminine side more often? That the days of a testosterone dominated world are numbered?