Decisions made for short-term profits, but which have great risk for the long-term future of the company. When that risk hits later on, its the taxpayers that are told that we have to bear the costs.
Sound familiar? It should, because its pretty much the shape of American 'free-market' capitalism these days.
And just like everything else we've seen, such bailouts can only work in the short term and are destined for long-term failure.
Lets take a brief look back at the American auto industry. In recent years, they've made their profits, such as they were, from selling big gas-guzzling SUV's. Lots of people tried to point out the flaws in this. They had awful fuel economy. This meant we imported more oil, which meant the balance of payments deficits for our country got worse. Also, by burning such huge amounts of fuel, they were awful for the environment and contributed to global warming.
But the big three American auto companies didn't care. They were looking at the short term profits quarter by quarter, and this is where they were making their money. So, they kept churning out more and more SUVs.
The people who were talking about Peak Oil were pointing out the problems with this. They'd always predicted that as we started to reach the peak zone, and its a long gentle curve, not like the peak of a triangle, that what you would see would be strong oscillations in the price of oil. It would go up sharply as people started to panic of oil running out and speculators moved into the market. It could just as easily drop quickly when people adjusted to the high prices and economies went into recession and demand drops.
So, the first time this happens, when the price of gas spikes up to $4 a gallon in the US and the economy starts to tank, the big three auto companies take a big hit. Even thought they should have seen this day coming, they weren't ready for it. At least not in the terms that you'd expect in a free market business. Toyota is selling their Hybrid Prius' as fast as they can make them, and none of the big three American companies have a product that can compete.
In a competitive free market, this is how these companies would be expected to compete. To be looking ahead and making sure that they have products that would be attractive to potential customers. Businesses that fail to do that would go out of business.
So, now we all about how a collapse in the auto industry would be a disaster. We are told that we can't let them fail. Sound familiar? We were told the same about the wall street giants a couple of months ago. But now, lets ask this question. Did the big three auto-companies count on this all along? Perhaps they did think that they were ready for the future. Its just that in early 21st century America, the smart way to be ready for the future is not to pay engineers to develop attractive products, but instead to make large political contributions. That way, when times get rough, the politicians bought with those contributions will act to bail out your company.
Here's the really ironic part of this. Just exactly who is going to bail out the big three is left vague in our corporate media. Its not even directly referred to as the government very often. And there's this bizarre discussion in parts of the news as to whether the money should come from TARP funds or from last year's energy bill.
But the key thing to know is that the person who will be bailing out the auto industry is you. Its your money as taxpayers that they want. Or, perhaps its more accurate to look at your children and grand children and know that they are the ones expected to bail out these companies. Because we don't have the money today to do this, so its more money we have to borrow. Its more debt we have to incur. Your children and grand children will be paying it off for a long time to come.
There's one group of people to whom this must sound quite strange. Funny how you don't see them on the corporate TV channels. I'm referring to the American workers who've been laid off by these same big-three auto companies. The big-three auto companies were perfectly willing to tell these tax payers to go get stuff when they thought that moving their jobs overseas would make a few more dollars of profit on the corporate bottom line. And now they have to come back to these same tax payers and ask them for the money to save the stock price of their companies.
Nope, you don't see too many interviews with laid-off auto workers asking how they feel about their tax dollars about to be given to the same auto companies that told them they were no longer neccessary.
The problem is that America is deep in debt. At all levels ... personal debt, corporate debt, government debt. At some levels, we've reached the point where we can't borrow any more. The values of our homes have fallen, so we can't borrow against that any more. Credit cards are maxed out. Our jobs are either disappearing or in danger. Corporations can't borrow anymore either. So, the one credit card that hasn't been maxed out yet is government debt. Right now everyone is trying to pay their monthly bills off that credit card.
In terms of personal finance, we'd all understand what that means. If our finances are in such a bad shape that we have to be paying our monthly bills off of the one last credit card that isn't maxed out, any sensible person would know that a crash is at hand. But, that little bit of wisdom never makes it onto the corporate TV news. There we just hear about how we just have to give another $25 billion away to one more group of business people who made bad decisions that let to short term profits but a long term crash.
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Monday, November 17, 2008
Friday, July 04, 2008
Self Evident Truths
Just because these words should always be said on this day. And the corporate media will stop at just acknowledging the right of the pursuit of happiness.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,
that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends,
it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,
and to institute new government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form,
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed,
will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer,
while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism,
it is their right,
it is their duty,
to throw off such government,
and to provide new guards for their future security."
-- The Declaration of Independence
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Obama and Financial Reform
One thing is clear about today. The deregulation of financial firms that occurred in the Bill Clinton 1990's is a key factor in the current financial crisis and recession we are facing today. So, I was interested in what the supreme agent of change, Sen. Obama, had to say about financial reform. Especially in the light of articles like those from Pam Martens about the large amount of contributions to the Obama campaign. How strong would Obama be in terms of imposing regulatory reform on a group of people who were key backers of his campaign from the beginning?
A google search on Obama and financial reform led to this USA Today article on a major speech by Sen. Obama on financial reform that occurred on March 26,2008.
The USA Today article also contained a link to this PDF file containing the full text of Sen. Obama's speech. The speech is worth exploring both because of its presence as perhaps one of the key issues that should be considered in this campaign, and also because its a classic example of what seems to be Sen. Obama's approach to speaking and policy.
In classic Obama fashion, on the surface it seems very nice. He is an articulate man who clearly has the good writers one would expect from a major political figure. He (or his writers) can show a grasp of the problems facing the country, and can usually annunciate them with emotion and impact. He, or his writers, can add enough details like long names of international agencies that make Sen. Obama sound well informed. He also appears to be saying he wants to make reforms to address the problem.
If someone just listened to the speech once, and did so rather casually, then I could easily see them walking away from an Obama speech being rather impressed. The problem lies when you look a little deeper. Being able to sound good is something that citizens should just treat as a given and then ignore. The key question of the day is what would a President Obama do about the crisis in our financial system. And when you look at the details it seems that the bark is far worse than the bite.
Here are the key items in the speech from the USA Today article, with some notes and comments about their true meaning.
• Giving the Federal Reserve system more oversight authority over institutions to which it provides credit as a "lender of last resort." Although Obama did not outline specifics, saying those would depend on the level of the Fed's assistance, "but at the very least, these new regulations should include liquidity and capital requirements."
Is he kidding? The Federal Reserve is one of the agencies that's gotten us into this mess. And one of the ways they've done so is to fail in their existing responsibilities to regulate banks. There are strong opinions out there that the Fed's policies under Greenspan helped create the bubble which is now deflating while trying to avoid a downturn after the earlier "dot com" speculation bubble deflated.
And Sen. Obama's big answer is to put this group in charge of 'oversight' of these firms. Talk about putting the fox in charge of guarding the henhouse. These sound like nice words until you stop and think about it.
If you really want regulation and oversight, what you do is you create an independent body that has the legal responsibility to handle that. You create clear and transparent rules that are fair and which must be followed. Then you put an independent body into the task of making sure those rules are followed. You want a body to be free of any other duties or roles that might cause a conflict of interest. And its clear that you want to instruct them to be aggressive in making sure the rules are followed, if for no other reason than to regain confidence in financial markets and the big players in them. Putting the Fed in charge of oversight does none of this.
• Strengthening capital, liquidity and financial disclosure regulations for financial institutions. "Transparency requirements must demand full disclosure by financial institutions to shareholders and counterparties," Obama said.
The first two are obvious and basically a return to earlier and saner policies. The very bank friendly regulators have obviously loosened up the rules on capital and liquidity way too much. The last is nice. That's it, nice. The idea of transparency is a good one. It is again obvious that you must have transparency in order to have a fair market. The problem is that this is almost the classic do-nothing reform by any politician that wants to sound like they are for reform but don't really want to do anything. They always offer 'transparency' as the answer.
The problem is that these regulations are then usually laxly enforced. The regulatory agency will always have other responsibilities, and enforcing a bunch of regulations on 'reporting' issues will always be a low priority. It is also an idea that is open to much mischief in the details. It is very easy to be for 'transparency', but then make sure the details of the rules have some big loopholes in them.
And, it really doesn't do anything. Gee, now there are some new reports out there. Maybe somebody reads them and says 'wow, that's awful'. What happens then? If the 'reform' is limited to just 'transparency', then nothing happens. So, while transparency is always an important concept that we must work for in any free and fair society, when it is presented by itself as the answer to a problem, it usually isn't.
• Creating a financial oversight panel that could monitor and report to the president about such rapid financial developments as the growth of bond-backed subprime mortgages.
Another one that sounds good on the surface. Creating a new body or board that does nothing is another classic do-nothing reform. Note that the boards only roles are to 'monitor and report to the President'. There's no authority to do anything here. Just yet another board that creates yet another report. A bunch of tax payer money wasted to no effect.
It is expected of any competent President and administration that they will pay attention to developments in the financial markets. That should be a part of the basic job description of a Presidential administration. How he wants to do it is his business, but its really better if you don't create some new board or body to do it. Because the things never go away.
And while President Obama might pay attention to their advice (interestingly he never actually 'says' that he will do so), there's no guarantee that the next President will. President Bush would obviously pay no attention to some board writing reports being critical of financial firms and calling for regulation. In fact, its a pretty fair guess that another president like President Bush would just stuff this board with cronies who would produce meaningless reports that all is wonderful and hunky and even dory.
So, all we've done is to create yet another government board that has no authority and that duplicates the duties a President and his administration should be doing anyways. This board will probably never go away and we'll be paying the salaries of board members and staff and renting office space and paying big expenses for them to go to their meetings for years and years to come.
When you see a politician propose a 'reform' that will clearly do absolutely nothing as part of a heavily promoted speech on such needed reforms, it really makes you question what is going on. Is the goal to sound good? Or is the goal to create meaningful reforms that will really fix the problem? Any speech with this reform in it has a very high probability of only wanting to accomplish the first. It smells a lot like trying to sound good AND managing not to upset any Wall St contributors at the same time by proposing ineffective nonsense.
• Providing an additional $30 billion in economic stimulus spending, including $10 billion in a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners. Obama said the fund was designed to help homeowners "sell a home that is beyond their means, or modify their loan to avoid foreclosure or bankruptcy." He also called for overhauling bankruptcy laws, "so families aren't forced to stick to the terms of a home loan that was predatory or unfair."
Good idea for a short term response to the current mess. Better than the Republicans just funneling money to their investor friends in that it actually gives a small amount to actual homeowners to help them. Does absolutely nothing to solve the bigger and more structural problems in the economic system, but its a nice bandaid to help with the current problem. Althought I'd hazard a quick, rough, off-the-cuff guess that its not nearly big enough.
• Strengthening investigations into trading activity that appears to involve market manipulation. "Reports have circulated in recent days that some traders may have intentionally spread rumors that (investment banker) Bear Stearns was in financial distress while making market bets against the company. The SEC should investigate and punish this kind of market manipulation and report its conclusions to Congress," Obama said.
Good, but way too narrow. There are much bigger irregularities out there. This is focused only some very specific cases of market manipulation. But it does nothing about say the people who bragged that they were creating financial instruments that no one could understand in which to peddle all this bad mortgage debt. There are some very big investigations that should take place, and instead Sen. Obama is proposing one or two show trials against a few people.
Note very carefully that this is the only 'investigate' on the list. Now go back and look at the contributor lists to his campaign and see who's walking away not being investigated. Any politician that is going to refuse to investigate his campaign backers is also going to need some sort of showy investigation of someone else in order to make it look like they are doing something.
• Creating a 10% mortgage interest tax credit for homeowners who do not itemize their taxes, cutting income taxes by up to $1,000 a year for "working families" and eliminating income taxes for retirees making less than $50,000 per year.
Another nice idea. Of course, most people I know started itemizing their taxes when they bought a home, so that's not really any real money, but maybe just some people being able to go back to filing 1040EZ forms and still get some interest credit. A $1000 tax cut isn't a bad idea, although not big enough and with the big vagueness on what's a 'working family'. And helping retirees pay less taxes is also a good idea. To me there is a very strong case for a society to say that anyone who's reached retirement age has done their bit and probably shouldn't be paying income taxes. And the limit keeps that from applying to rich investors.
But, again, these do absolutely nothing to reform a financial industry that just scammed and conned a nation into a financial crisis.
That's the whole list. The bad idea of putting the Fed in charge, along with some vague talk about tightening up capital and liquidity requirements. Doesn't even say if they'll go back to where they should be after a long run of loosening them, but at least he says they should start heading back in the right direction.
But for all those pretty words, that's pretty much it.
And, what's not said is very important. When I read through the text of the speech I can find little or not criticism of the massive billion dollar bailouts being given to the financial industry. The only thing close to criticism is the proposal that those getting the money should be subject to some oversight by the Federal Reserve. Not a word of criticism about hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars being made available to financial institutions. And not a hint that he might change or end that giveaway of tax payer money if elected.
The reaction to the speech is telling. First in the USA Today article you get a sense of the truly false debate between Democrat and Republican. McCain said "There is a tendency for liberals to seek big government programs that sock it to American taxpayers while failing to solve the very real problems we face."
Huh? Obama wants to put the Fed in charge of regulation and create some silly board that does nothing. And McCain is ranting about big government programs? Obama is using a fraction of the amount of money to help homeowners as compared to what's been already promised to bailout the financial industry, and McCain is complaining about 'big government programs'? The guy who supporting spending another $160+ billion on the war in Iraq is complaining about 'big government programs'?
So often, the 'debate' between Republicans and Democrats seems incredibly phony and irrelevant. You've got two candidates that both essentially promise to let the financial industry get off scot-free for a lot of fraud and abuse, so they've got to somehow try to create some sense of difference and debate. Thus you get Sen. Obama making a speech full of very nice sounding words. And you get Sen. McCain giving a stock Republican line while acting completely shocked that anyone would dare to propose even useless and meaningless fig-leaf reforms. A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.
And the reaction you did not hear is also telling. Remember Sherlock Holmes and the notion that the most important clue was that the dog did NOT bark? Have you heard any howls of pain from Wall Street over this speech? After all, these are not people who keep their opinions quiet. There are close ties usually between investment companies and bankers and corporate media firms. And every media is full of 'business reporters' who's job is largely to publically announce whatever these companies are saying on a regular basis. So, if they were upset, I think you'd hear about it. Where's the outrage from Wall Street? Perhaps the silence is a rather important clue about what's really going on.
By contrast, go to this page on the Nader for President website where he gives his own proposals in the area. There are twelve of them, and at least 8 of those are very serious reforms that are clearly worded to state specific changes he feels that should be made. The list is too long to copy in here without making this already long post incredibly way too long. But follow the link and compare with what Mr. Obama is saying.
Plus, you have a basic ability to have more confidence in Mr. Nader's willingness to follow through on these proposals simply because he's not sitting on top of a campaign war chest stuffed full of Wall St. money.
I did a quick look on her website and on google for statements from Ms. McKinney on the issue and couldn't find any.
A google search on Obama and financial reform led to this USA Today article on a major speech by Sen. Obama on financial reform that occurred on March 26,2008.
The USA Today article also contained a link to this PDF file containing the full text of Sen. Obama's speech. The speech is worth exploring both because of its presence as perhaps one of the key issues that should be considered in this campaign, and also because its a classic example of what seems to be Sen. Obama's approach to speaking and policy.
In classic Obama fashion, on the surface it seems very nice. He is an articulate man who clearly has the good writers one would expect from a major political figure. He (or his writers) can show a grasp of the problems facing the country, and can usually annunciate them with emotion and impact. He, or his writers, can add enough details like long names of international agencies that make Sen. Obama sound well informed. He also appears to be saying he wants to make reforms to address the problem.
If someone just listened to the speech once, and did so rather casually, then I could easily see them walking away from an Obama speech being rather impressed. The problem lies when you look a little deeper. Being able to sound good is something that citizens should just treat as a given and then ignore. The key question of the day is what would a President Obama do about the crisis in our financial system. And when you look at the details it seems that the bark is far worse than the bite.
Here are the key items in the speech from the USA Today article, with some notes and comments about their true meaning.
• Giving the Federal Reserve system more oversight authority over institutions to which it provides credit as a "lender of last resort." Although Obama did not outline specifics, saying those would depend on the level of the Fed's assistance, "but at the very least, these new regulations should include liquidity and capital requirements."
Is he kidding? The Federal Reserve is one of the agencies that's gotten us into this mess. And one of the ways they've done so is to fail in their existing responsibilities to regulate banks. There are strong opinions out there that the Fed's policies under Greenspan helped create the bubble which is now deflating while trying to avoid a downturn after the earlier "dot com" speculation bubble deflated.
And Sen. Obama's big answer is to put this group in charge of 'oversight' of these firms. Talk about putting the fox in charge of guarding the henhouse. These sound like nice words until you stop and think about it.
If you really want regulation and oversight, what you do is you create an independent body that has the legal responsibility to handle that. You create clear and transparent rules that are fair and which must be followed. Then you put an independent body into the task of making sure those rules are followed. You want a body to be free of any other duties or roles that might cause a conflict of interest. And its clear that you want to instruct them to be aggressive in making sure the rules are followed, if for no other reason than to regain confidence in financial markets and the big players in them. Putting the Fed in charge of oversight does none of this.
• Strengthening capital, liquidity and financial disclosure regulations for financial institutions. "Transparency requirements must demand full disclosure by financial institutions to shareholders and counterparties," Obama said.
The first two are obvious and basically a return to earlier and saner policies. The very bank friendly regulators have obviously loosened up the rules on capital and liquidity way too much. The last is nice. That's it, nice. The idea of transparency is a good one. It is again obvious that you must have transparency in order to have a fair market. The problem is that this is almost the classic do-nothing reform by any politician that wants to sound like they are for reform but don't really want to do anything. They always offer 'transparency' as the answer.
The problem is that these regulations are then usually laxly enforced. The regulatory agency will always have other responsibilities, and enforcing a bunch of regulations on 'reporting' issues will always be a low priority. It is also an idea that is open to much mischief in the details. It is very easy to be for 'transparency', but then make sure the details of the rules have some big loopholes in them.
And, it really doesn't do anything. Gee, now there are some new reports out there. Maybe somebody reads them and says 'wow, that's awful'. What happens then? If the 'reform' is limited to just 'transparency', then nothing happens. So, while transparency is always an important concept that we must work for in any free and fair society, when it is presented by itself as the answer to a problem, it usually isn't.
• Creating a financial oversight panel that could monitor and report to the president about such rapid financial developments as the growth of bond-backed subprime mortgages.
Another one that sounds good on the surface. Creating a new body or board that does nothing is another classic do-nothing reform. Note that the boards only roles are to 'monitor and report to the President'. There's no authority to do anything here. Just yet another board that creates yet another report. A bunch of tax payer money wasted to no effect.
It is expected of any competent President and administration that they will pay attention to developments in the financial markets. That should be a part of the basic job description of a Presidential administration. How he wants to do it is his business, but its really better if you don't create some new board or body to do it. Because the things never go away.
And while President Obama might pay attention to their advice (interestingly he never actually 'says' that he will do so), there's no guarantee that the next President will. President Bush would obviously pay no attention to some board writing reports being critical of financial firms and calling for regulation. In fact, its a pretty fair guess that another president like President Bush would just stuff this board with cronies who would produce meaningless reports that all is wonderful and hunky and even dory.
So, all we've done is to create yet another government board that has no authority and that duplicates the duties a President and his administration should be doing anyways. This board will probably never go away and we'll be paying the salaries of board members and staff and renting office space and paying big expenses for them to go to their meetings for years and years to come.
When you see a politician propose a 'reform' that will clearly do absolutely nothing as part of a heavily promoted speech on such needed reforms, it really makes you question what is going on. Is the goal to sound good? Or is the goal to create meaningful reforms that will really fix the problem? Any speech with this reform in it has a very high probability of only wanting to accomplish the first. It smells a lot like trying to sound good AND managing not to upset any Wall St contributors at the same time by proposing ineffective nonsense.
• Providing an additional $30 billion in economic stimulus spending, including $10 billion in a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners. Obama said the fund was designed to help homeowners "sell a home that is beyond their means, or modify their loan to avoid foreclosure or bankruptcy." He also called for overhauling bankruptcy laws, "so families aren't forced to stick to the terms of a home loan that was predatory or unfair."
Good idea for a short term response to the current mess. Better than the Republicans just funneling money to their investor friends in that it actually gives a small amount to actual homeowners to help them. Does absolutely nothing to solve the bigger and more structural problems in the economic system, but its a nice bandaid to help with the current problem. Althought I'd hazard a quick, rough, off-the-cuff guess that its not nearly big enough.
• Strengthening investigations into trading activity that appears to involve market manipulation. "Reports have circulated in recent days that some traders may have intentionally spread rumors that (investment banker) Bear Stearns was in financial distress while making market bets against the company. The SEC should investigate and punish this kind of market manipulation and report its conclusions to Congress," Obama said.
Good, but way too narrow. There are much bigger irregularities out there. This is focused only some very specific cases of market manipulation. But it does nothing about say the people who bragged that they were creating financial instruments that no one could understand in which to peddle all this bad mortgage debt. There are some very big investigations that should take place, and instead Sen. Obama is proposing one or two show trials against a few people.
Note very carefully that this is the only 'investigate' on the list. Now go back and look at the contributor lists to his campaign and see who's walking away not being investigated. Any politician that is going to refuse to investigate his campaign backers is also going to need some sort of showy investigation of someone else in order to make it look like they are doing something.
• Creating a 10% mortgage interest tax credit for homeowners who do not itemize their taxes, cutting income taxes by up to $1,000 a year for "working families" and eliminating income taxes for retirees making less than $50,000 per year.
Another nice idea. Of course, most people I know started itemizing their taxes when they bought a home, so that's not really any real money, but maybe just some people being able to go back to filing 1040EZ forms and still get some interest credit. A $1000 tax cut isn't a bad idea, although not big enough and with the big vagueness on what's a 'working family'. And helping retirees pay less taxes is also a good idea. To me there is a very strong case for a society to say that anyone who's reached retirement age has done their bit and probably shouldn't be paying income taxes. And the limit keeps that from applying to rich investors.
But, again, these do absolutely nothing to reform a financial industry that just scammed and conned a nation into a financial crisis.
That's the whole list. The bad idea of putting the Fed in charge, along with some vague talk about tightening up capital and liquidity requirements. Doesn't even say if they'll go back to where they should be after a long run of loosening them, but at least he says they should start heading back in the right direction.
But for all those pretty words, that's pretty much it.
And, what's not said is very important. When I read through the text of the speech I can find little or not criticism of the massive billion dollar bailouts being given to the financial industry. The only thing close to criticism is the proposal that those getting the money should be subject to some oversight by the Federal Reserve. Not a word of criticism about hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars being made available to financial institutions. And not a hint that he might change or end that giveaway of tax payer money if elected.
The reaction to the speech is telling. First in the USA Today article you get a sense of the truly false debate between Democrat and Republican. McCain said "There is a tendency for liberals to seek big government programs that sock it to American taxpayers while failing to solve the very real problems we face."
Huh? Obama wants to put the Fed in charge of regulation and create some silly board that does nothing. And McCain is ranting about big government programs? Obama is using a fraction of the amount of money to help homeowners as compared to what's been already promised to bailout the financial industry, and McCain is complaining about 'big government programs'? The guy who supporting spending another $160+ billion on the war in Iraq is complaining about 'big government programs'?
So often, the 'debate' between Republicans and Democrats seems incredibly phony and irrelevant. You've got two candidates that both essentially promise to let the financial industry get off scot-free for a lot of fraud and abuse, so they've got to somehow try to create some sense of difference and debate. Thus you get Sen. Obama making a speech full of very nice sounding words. And you get Sen. McCain giving a stock Republican line while acting completely shocked that anyone would dare to propose even useless and meaningless fig-leaf reforms. A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.
And the reaction you did not hear is also telling. Remember Sherlock Holmes and the notion that the most important clue was that the dog did NOT bark? Have you heard any howls of pain from Wall Street over this speech? After all, these are not people who keep their opinions quiet. There are close ties usually between investment companies and bankers and corporate media firms. And every media is full of 'business reporters' who's job is largely to publically announce whatever these companies are saying on a regular basis. So, if they were upset, I think you'd hear about it. Where's the outrage from Wall Street? Perhaps the silence is a rather important clue about what's really going on.
By contrast, go to this page on the Nader for President website where he gives his own proposals in the area. There are twelve of them, and at least 8 of those are very serious reforms that are clearly worded to state specific changes he feels that should be made. The list is too long to copy in here without making this already long post incredibly way too long. But follow the link and compare with what Mr. Obama is saying.
Plus, you have a basic ability to have more confidence in Mr. Nader's willingness to follow through on these proposals simply because he's not sitting on top of a campaign war chest stuffed full of Wall St. money.
I did a quick look on her website and on google for statements from Ms. McKinney on the issue and couldn't find any.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The real Obama is standing up
From www.commondreams.org
Wal-Mart Defender To Direct Obama’s Economic Policy
"Just days after clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Obama is naming as his economic policy director an economist who has clashed with critics of Wal-Mart by defending the company as a boon to poor Americans."
------------
I can't say I'm surprised by this. We've known that Obama was being heavily funded by Wall Street and corporate America (see the Pam Martens articles
And we've known that the pattern of Democratic Party politics for the last twenty years is for the nominee to lie to the party voters during the primary season. Then they always swerve hard to the right as soon as they get the nomination never to return to the pseudo-progressive lines they used in the primaries.
And, what does it say for Obama's character that he only does this after he has the nomination sewn up? When he needs to talk to Democrats about the President he'll be he tries to sound progressive and chants 'change' like a mantra. Then as soon as he's got the nomination he reveals that his campaign's economic adviser is someone who's been promoting and defending Wal-Mart? Any Democrat should be insulted by this.
There's also been this strange meme where we were supposed to believe that Obama wasn't really the candidate he pretended to be when he makes awful anti-progressive speeches like the ones to the Cuban lobby in Miami or the AIPAC lobby in DC. There's been this bizarre notion that he's really a secret revolutionary whom we have to support on faith.
Well, I guess half of that was true. He wasn't the candidate he was pretending to be in the primaries. Instead he's much worse. The guy who's been defending Wal-mart now has charge of Obama's economic policies. That's Wal-mart, the company that hate unions and doesn't allow any employee organizing, the company that destroys locallly owned small businesses, the company that has helped destroy American manufacturing and good jobs by importing all the made-in-China crap.
Now Obama wants to tell us that what's good for Wal-mart is the 'change' we can expect?
BTW, does anyone notice that the Democrats just gave everyone a stirring choice between a former Wal-mart board member and someone who picks a Wal-mart ally as economic advisor? That's the Democrats idea of a debate. And they worked hard to kick everyone else off the stage.
Green Party of the USA
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Another article on Obama from today's news. This one about his recent speech to AIPAC. From www.counterpunch.org
Deadly Fallout From Obama's Groveling Before Israel Lobby, By JAMES G. ABOUREZK
"It was left to Barack Obama, a candidate who at one time brought a great deal of hope to many Americans, including this writer, to complete the round robin of pandering to AIPAC, first by wearing not only an American flag pin, but one conjoined with an Israeli flag pin as well. Obama’s nomination has improved America’s image around the world, with the realization that, “everyone has a chance in America,” as the saying used to go. But that is what makes his pandering so painful.
Obama declared Jerusalem indivisible, presumably for the Israelis only, in contrast to the United Nations’ holding that Jerusalem was, and is, an international city, belonging to neither side."
Wal-Mart Defender To Direct Obama’s Economic Policy
"Just days after clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Obama is naming as his economic policy director an economist who has clashed with critics of Wal-Mart by defending the company as a boon to poor Americans."
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I can't say I'm surprised by this. We've known that Obama was being heavily funded by Wall Street and corporate America (see the Pam Martens articles
And we've known that the pattern of Democratic Party politics for the last twenty years is for the nominee to lie to the party voters during the primary season. Then they always swerve hard to the right as soon as they get the nomination never to return to the pseudo-progressive lines they used in the primaries.
And, what does it say for Obama's character that he only does this after he has the nomination sewn up? When he needs to talk to Democrats about the President he'll be he tries to sound progressive and chants 'change' like a mantra. Then as soon as he's got the nomination he reveals that his campaign's economic adviser is someone who's been promoting and defending Wal-Mart? Any Democrat should be insulted by this.
There's also been this strange meme where we were supposed to believe that Obama wasn't really the candidate he pretended to be when he makes awful anti-progressive speeches like the ones to the Cuban lobby in Miami or the AIPAC lobby in DC. There's been this bizarre notion that he's really a secret revolutionary whom we have to support on faith.
Well, I guess half of that was true. He wasn't the candidate he was pretending to be in the primaries. Instead he's much worse. The guy who's been defending Wal-mart now has charge of Obama's economic policies. That's Wal-mart, the company that hate unions and doesn't allow any employee organizing, the company that destroys locallly owned small businesses, the company that has helped destroy American manufacturing and good jobs by importing all the made-in-China crap.
Now Obama wants to tell us that what's good for Wal-mart is the 'change' we can expect?
BTW, does anyone notice that the Democrats just gave everyone a stirring choice between a former Wal-mart board member and someone who picks a Wal-mart ally as economic advisor? That's the Democrats idea of a debate. And they worked hard to kick everyone else off the stage.
Green Party of the USA
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Another article on Obama from today's news. This one about his recent speech to AIPAC. From www.counterpunch.org
Deadly Fallout From Obama's Groveling Before Israel Lobby, By JAMES G. ABOUREZK
"It was left to Barack Obama, a candidate who at one time brought a great deal of hope to many Americans, including this writer, to complete the round robin of pandering to AIPAC, first by wearing not only an American flag pin, but one conjoined with an Israeli flag pin as well. Obama’s nomination has improved America’s image around the world, with the realization that, “everyone has a chance in America,” as the saying used to go. But that is what makes his pandering so painful.
Obama declared Jerusalem indivisible, presumably for the Israelis only, in contrast to the United Nations’ holding that Jerusalem was, and is, an international city, belonging to neither side."