Obama Pulls a Clinton

by Robert Sheer, Truthdig

Here we go again. When Bill Clinton suffered an electoral reversal after his first two years in office, he abruptly embraced the corporate money guys who had financed his congressional opposition in an effort to purchase a second term. On Tuesday in his Wall Street Journal Op-Ed piece, Barack Obama veered sharply down that same course, trumpeting his executive order “ … to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive. …”

He employed the same “creating a 21st-century regulatory system” rationalization used by Clinton when he signed off on the sweeping deregulation legislation that unleashed the Wall Street greed that ended up being the biggest job-killer since the Great Depression. “Over the (past) seven years, we have tried to modernize the economy,” Clinton enthused as he signed the Financial Services Modernization Act that repealed key New Deal legislation, adding, “And today what we are doing is modernizing the financial services industry, tearing down those antiquated laws and granting banks significant new authority.” Modernizing was the propaganda constant, as in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that Clinton signed, thus shielding financial derivatives from any government regulation.

[read the rest, here]

Obama Uses Executive Order to Begin Neoliberal Assault on Regulation

by Scott Creighton

The following definition of deregulation comes from “John Williamson’s “Washington Consensus“, a list of policy proposals that appeared to have gained consensus approval among the Washington-based international economic organizations (like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank).”  The active definition of neoliberalism or “free trade” ideology.

Deregulation – abolition of regulations that impede market entry or restrict competition, except for those justified on safety, environmental and consumer protection grounds, and prudent oversight of financial institutions;

President Obama took time out of his busy schedule to write an op-ed published today in the Wall Street Journal. Obama used this op-ed to signify his devotion to the free-market ideology that is the basis for the neoliberalization of countless countries over the past 5 decades, all of which had disastrous effects on the vast majority of the population of those nations.

Obama used the opportunity to announce that he was going to begin a process of even more deregulation here in the United States, in an effort to better serve the business interests of the country. All this he will do by decree of imperial executive order, no less.

Was Yesterday’s Stock Market “Glitch” Really Big Banking Blackmail?

by Scott Creighton

The White House gets its way again. They get their way on two measures that would have given the people at least a little control of the “too big too fail” banking system. But how they got it, well that might just be the REAL story of the day.

“I mean this really sounds like market manipulation to me. This is outrageous.”

The “HOPE” of real getting real banking reform under this administration is dead. Dead on arrival. What is left is the “Chris Dodd Big Banking Giveaway Plan” which is to banking “reform” what Obamacare was to “healthcare reform”. 

Exposed: Bernanke’s “Skimming Operation”

(So what the banks did in a sense was, they carefully removed restrictions on housing loans and created what the industry called “liar loans”, loans that they knew would default when they were making them. They got their co-conspirator at the credit rating agencies to slap “AAA” ratings on them.  They got their money up front and then packaged them up and sold them as bundles, making even more money on the toxic assets that only they knew were toxic. They sold them to various 401 ks, state and local governments, other nations. Then, as they started to default and the massive bubble began to burst, they rushed to congress, with the same people who helped create this scam, namely Bernanke and Paulson and Geithner, to blackmail congress into pumping nearly a trillion dollars of liquidity into their banks so they could then buy up all the other institutions that they had sold the bad debts to. They got paid on the front end, in the middle, and on the back end.)

by Mike Whitney, Information Clearing House

The reappointment of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke means that the opportunity for change has passed and the reform movement is dead. It means that and that derivatives trading, off-balance sheet operations, securitization, dark pools and high frequency trading will go on much as they have before. It means that the public will continue to be gouged so that a handful of Wall Street sharpies can rake in obscene profits using complex “financial innovations” and over-leveraged debt instruments. It means that the entire system will continue to be put at risk to protect the interests of investment banks and hedge funds. It means that the subsidies, the preferential treatment, and the bailouts will continue to fuel populist rage and exacerbate deepening divisions in society. It means that the status quo has been preserved and that it’s “business as usual”.

  No reform movement will succeed as long as Bernanke is at the Fed.  He’s an agent of the big banks and a Wall Street loyalist. He’s also the author of “Too Big To Fail”, the controversial theory which provides unlimited state support for financial institutions that are deemed too large or interconnected to fail. TBTF means that capitalism’s vital market-clearing function can avoided if one is rich or powerful enough. Bernanke repealed capitalism to save his friends.

The Crisis Is Not Over

by Paul Craig Roberts, Information Clearing House

Readers ask if the financial crisis is over, if the recovery is for real and, if not, what are Americans’ prospects. The short answer is that the financial crisis is not over, the recovery is not real, and the U.S. faces a far worse crisis than the financial one. Here is the situation as I understand it:

The global crisis is understood as a banking crisis brought on by the mindless deregulation of the U.S. financial arena. Investment banks leveraged assets to highly irresponsible levels, issued questionable financial instruments with fraudulent investment grade ratings, and issued the instruments through direct sales to customers rather than through markets.

The Obama opiate: Crisis deepens, crowds cheer

(now that we are done with the FAKE DISSENT, let’s get back to the real threat)

by Larry Chin, Global Research

Six months since taking the reins, the Barack Obama administration has met its primary objective. It has swiftly ramped up the murderous imperial agenda inherited from Bush-Cheney while the masses, pacified and deceived by the appeal of the Obama image, pay no attention to realities.

Obama touts economic “recovery”

(now that we are done with the FAKE DISSENT, let’s get back to the real threat)

by Tom Eley and Barry Grey, WSWS

The Obama administration and the media have seized on second quarter gross domestic product (GDP) data to promote the notion that the recession is ending and “recovery” is underway. This effort is summed up by the cover of the current edition of Newsweek, which carries the banner headline, “The Recession is Over!”

The claim that the recession is ending is being used to reject any serious relief for workers who are being devastated by layoffs, wage reductions, home foreclosures and cuts in basic social services, and to set the stage for unprecedented attacks on social programs such as Medicare and Social Security to pay for the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks.

Ron Paul Wants to Audit the Fed While Team DLC Obama™ Brand Wants to Give the Fed More Power

by Scott Creighton

Tim Geithner, Barack Obama, and Larry Summers are going to announce tomorrow their new plan to increase the powers of the Federal Reserve Bank system in America. The same Federal Reserve PRIVATE Bank system that just fucked us out of TRILLIONS of dollars and the SAME Federal Reserve PRIVATE Bank system that Geither was the head of before accepting the job of White House Paymaster General to the wealthiest people in the country and on the planet.

The administration’s overhaul plan would make the Fed a systemic risk regulator to oversee large institutions whose failure could threaten the stability of the entire system.   MSNBC

I’m sorry, but wasn’t that part of the job they had before, back when Geithner was head of the Federal Reserve of New York?

Barack Obama is Not “the greatest man of our generation”

The Miracle of Chile comes to America

by Scott Creighton (reposted on March 12th 2012)

Recently I communicated with someone I knew from a previous life; back when I had a future.  This friend is a liberal and an accomplished artist who is committed to the craft of his work and the teaching of others who are lucky enough to learn from him.  “A Life in the Theater”; it was a noble ambition of mine but an achievement of his. And for that he deserves great respect.

In an advisory position, he once tried to get me to step outside myself, to look at a situation from a different perspective and to put aside my previous prejudices, my fears, and my anger just long enough that I may avert a pending disaster.  I tried but ultimately failed and thus a great turn took place in the direction of my life, the repercussions of which were immeasurable. Had I the wisdom or the openness to understand his warnings at the time, perhaps a different life would have been mine. Perhaps not.

But in so much as I should have heard the words of my then adviser and taken them to heart, for my sake as well as for those around me, I have to ask the same of that man now.

I have to ask that he hear not the anger, not the bitterness, not “political euphemisms” or “personal animosities” that make it altogether too easy to dismiss the validity of my claims and the claims of millions of others.

I have to ask of him what he did once of me;  just listen.

Barack Obama is not “the greatest man of our generation“.

Is Larry Summers Taking Kickbacks From the Banks He’s Bailing Out?

Mark Ames, Truthdig

Is Larry Summers taking kickbacks from the banks he’s bailing out?

Last month, a little-known company where Summers served on the board of directors received a $42 million investment from a group of investors, including three banks that Summers, Obama’s effective “economy czar,” has been doling out billions in bailout money to: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. The banks invested into the small startup company Revolution Money, right at the time when Summers was administering the “stress test” to these same banks.