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Paul B. Farrell
Jan. 19, 2010, 12:01 a.m. EST · Recommend (7) · Post:
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By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- An open letter to President Obama: You are failing us. Many now question voting for you.
A year ago, millions of Americans -- investors, taxpayers, consumers, voters -- came together uplifted by the "audacity of hope," inspired by a vision of "change we can believe in," by "bold and specific ideas about how to fix our ailing economy and strengthen the middle class, make health care affordable for all, achieve energy independence, and keep America safe in a dangerous world."
"Yes, we can" was the rallying cheer. You were the game-changer after the Bush-Cheney fiasco. What happened? Today we just don't see, or expect to see, any real change we can believe in. America is more polarized than under Bush's GOP, dysfunctional as both parties tragically undermine our great nation.
A special election to fill the seat held by the late Senator Ted Kennedy is going to have enormous implications for the entire country. Video courtesy Fox News.
There are many reasons future historians may rate your presidency average, or even a failure, at least based on the gap between the promise a year ago and the reality today, certainly for investors. But we also know that the future, seen through a broader historical lens, will reveal a natural cycle with you cast in the predictable final scene of a Shakespearean-style plot driven by fate, the same dramatic destiny of all great nations and civilizations. We know a dark conspiracy made up of Wall Street, corporate chief executives and the Forbes 400 controls Washington, limiting and manipulating you. So we know it's not all your fault -- for you are playing your role well in America's epic historical drama.
As Shakespeare put it: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances." As this past year unfolded it became painfully obvious you are indeed playing a role in a historic drama, along with other leaders in a staged, life-cycle, endgame conspiracy that includes Presidents Reagan, Clinton and Bush, Fed Chairmen Greenspan and Bernanke, and Wall Street's bosses --Paulson and your fat-cat banker buddies. The final scene of this Shakespearean drama is playing out this very moment, with 10 improvisational plot points driving your character's role.
"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." John Adams, a great American president, made that famous prediction at the beginning of our great nation.
And yet, paradoxically, when a democracy commits suicide, it also kills off the very capitalism that made it powerful, the economic system Adam Smith identified the same year our Declaration of Independence was signed. Today we are neither independent nor free; King George has been replaced by a far more powerful moneyed conspiracy that you sold out to last year.
Our time is up, says Scottish historian Alexander Tytler, recently quoted by economist Marc Faber: "The average life span of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years." Then "once a society becomes successful it becomes arrogant, righteous, overconfident, corrupt, and decadent ... overspends ... costly wars ... wealth inequity and social tensions increase; and society enters a secular decline."
We're on suicide watch, acting out the final scenes President Adams predicted for democracy, as Wall Street murders capitalism.
Back in 2003, coincidental with the "greatest foreign policy blunder in American history," the Iraq war, Kevin Phillips, a political historian, published "Wealth and Democracy." Phillips warned: "Most great nations, at the peak of their economic power, become arrogant and wage great world wars at great cost, wasting vast resources, taking on huge debt, and ultimately burning themselves out." Three trillion wasted, says economist Joseph Stiglitz. And now, Mr. President, you're playing your role, along with Bush, Paulson, Bernanke and Congress, piling on an unsustainable $23.7 trillion in what is the greatest domestic blunder in American history.
Former Fed vice-chair Alan Blinder recently wrote in The Journal: "When economists first heard Gekko's now-famous dictum, 'Greed is good,' they thought it a crude expression of Adam Smith's 'Invisible Hand' -- which is one of history's great ideas. But in Smith's vision, greed is socially beneficial only when properly harnessed and channeled," with incentives for risk-taking, honest competition, regulatory safeguards, and regulators who will actually enforce the rules. But "when these conditions fail to hold, greed is not good." Blinder fears "that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a sturdier and safer financial system is slipping away." No consumer protection, no mortgage clawbacks, no derivatives regulations, nothing. You are setting the stage for another, bigger meltdown, the "Great Depression 2," the last tragic act in this drama, dead ahead.
- john.q.smith | 12:35 a.m. Today12:35 a.m. Jan. 19, 2010
Sometimes you take whatever help you can get.
3:55 p.m. Jan. 15, 2010 | Comments: 2
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