Robert Scheer: The Men We Trusted to Lead Us

[marmar]

from truthdig:



The Men We Trusted to Lead Us

Posted on Sep 28, 2011
By Robert Scheer


Now he tells us. On Wednesday Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke referred to the nation’s unemployment rate as a “national crisis,” an obvious if depressing fact of life to the 25 million Americans who have been unsuccessfully attempting to find full-time employment.

But to finally hear those words from the man George W. Bush and Barack Obama both appointed to lead us out of the great recession is a bracing reminder of how markedly the policies of both those presidents have failed: “We’ve had close to 10 percent unemployment now for a number of years, and of the people who are unemployed, about 45 percent have been unemployed for six months or more,” Bernanke said. “This is unheard of.”

But why is Bernanke just now discovering this after having overseen the Fed’s purchase of trillions in toxic mortgage-backed securities from the too-big-to-fail banks that sacrificed people’s homes in a giant Ponzi scheme? Why did he throw all of that money at the banks without getting anything back in the way of relief for the people the bankers swindled?

The housing meltdown, which has robbed Americans of a considerable portion of their net worth, has led to the continued depressed consumer confidence that is the prime cause of crisis-level unemployment. In another of his too-late-to-matter moments, Bernanke acknowledged that “strong housing policies to help the market recover” would “clearly be very useful,” but he failed to suggest any. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_men_we_trusted_to_lead_us_20110928/

[geckosfeet]

1. more...

The Men We Trusted to Lead Us

Bernanke, along with then-New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, helped implement the Bush strategy of saving the banks in the hope that their rising tide would lift our little boats. That remained the strategy when President Obama rewarded Geithner for having saved AIG and Citigroup by naming him treasury secretary in the incoming government.

With the Geithner appointment, and the even more disturbing selection of Lawrence Summers to be his top economic adviser, Obama sealed his own fate as president. By turning to those disciples of Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, a prime enabler of Wall Street greed, the new president fatally betrayed his promise of hope.

If you still need confirmation of just how decisive a betrayal those appointments were, check out Ron Suskind's new book, "Confidence Men," a devastating insider account of the Obama White House that clearly identifies as the source of this president's failure "Rubin's B-Team," Summers and Geithner, "two men whose actions had contributed to the very financial disaster they were hired to solve." Suskind quotes then-Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., one of the few who dared stand up to the Wall Street lobbyists, as telling Obama, "I don't understand how you could do this; you’ve picked the wrong people!"

Of course the Democrats from the Clinton era don't bear all of the responsibility for the radical deregulation of the financial industry that ended the sensible restraints on greed installed by Franklin Roosevelt in response to the Great Depression. Indeed, the inspiration came from Republicans led by Phil Gramm, the then-senator from Texas who as head of the Banking Committee authored the legislation that Wall Street lobbyists had long pushed unsuccessfully.

The Men We Trusted to Lead Us

[Doctor_J]

4. I think the fix might have been in

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., one of the few who dared stand up to the Wall Street lobbyists, as telling Obama, "I don't understand how you could do this; you’ve picked the wrong people!"

Rather than this being a "mistake", it seems a much more likely answer that Obama's appointment of these people was a condition of his being allowed by the oligarchs to win the election. The other alternative is that Obama's ideology is very similar to that of Bush and he's part of their crime cabal.

[xchrom]

2. recommend

[leveymg]

3. Disagree: "depressed consumer confidence is cause of unemployment". Wrong. Prime cause of crisis

level unemployment (which is actually closer to 30 percent, including chronically-underemployed) is the refusal of multinational corporations to reinvest the 2 or 3 trillion dollars they have offshored in recent years. They just took their goodies from the bail-out, and stashed the cash abroad.

When are economists, pundits, politicians and other American opinion-leaders going to admit that obvious fact to themselves and the public?