This story originally appeared at Truthdig. Robert Scheer is the author of The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street (Nation Books). So much for the meritocracy. Despite an elite education, effusive charm and brilliant wit, Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, has ended up betraying his humble origins by abjectly serving the most rapacious variant of Wall Street greed. They both talk a good progressive game, but when push comes to shove—meaning when the banking lobby weighs in—big money talks and the best and the brightest fold. The defining moment of Clinton’s capitulation was his destruction of Brooksley Born, the one member of his administration with the courage and prescience to warn him about the unregulated derivatives trading that ultimately led to the housing collapse. For Obama, it is his decision not to nominate Elizabeth Warren to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she fought so hard to create.
How deceptive for politicians to stress “entitlements” when they talk about gutting Social Security and Medicare, two programs long paid for by their beneficiaries.
Face it. We live in two nations, sharply divided by an enormous economic chasm between the super-rich and everyone else.
reminder via @crampell that the rich are paying more in taxes because they are sucking up more of the wealth http://t.co/ayi7CUk
Paul Krugman makes a good point here, but I'm disappointed that his post titled "Gangs" isn't about what I imagined http://t.co/qAlGJGx
Obama’s refusal to take the fight to Senate Republicans by nominating Warren should be taken as the vital measure of the man. This gutless decision comes after the president populated his administration with the very people who created the financial meltdown.
The Harvard credential worked for the likes of economist Lawrence Summers, who carried water for Wall Street under both Clinton and Obama, but not for that university’s distinguished law professor Warren, an outspoken defender of consumer rights who dared represent the interests of the victims of the banking scams. It is a painful reminder that for Democrats as well as Republicans, governance is still all about serving the rich.
Both Democratic presidents had no difficulty appointing top bankers and their acolytes to all of the key economic positions in their administrations but drew the line at fully backing the rare member of their team who had a proven record of defending the public interest when it was being savaged. Consider the fawning treatment of former Goldman Sachs partner Gary Gensler by both Clinton and Obama. In the Clinton Treasury Department, it was Gensler working under both Robert Rubin and Summers who forcefully pushed for the radical deregulation of the financial industry that led to the biggest economic implosion since the Great Depression.
As Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, put it in opposing Obama’s nomination of Gensler to be head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the position once held by Born: “Mr. Gensler worked with Sen. Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan to exempt credit default swaps from regulation, which led to the collapse of AIG and has resulted in the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history.” This bailout was engineered in cooperation with the Bush administration by Timothy Geithner, then head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, who was rewarded for his catering to Wall Street avarice by being named Obama’s treasury secretary.
With Geithner and Gensler now in charge of reregulating Wall Street as ordered by the Dodd-Frank law, it is no wonder that the lobbyists have been able to stall any significant progress in controlling the ever-threatening time bomb of the still unregulated $600 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market. It was after all Gensler who assured Congress back during the Clinton years that Brooksley Born was an alarmist and that the “OTC derivatives directly and indirectly support higher investment and growth in living standards in the United States and around the world.”
No wonder Gensler had no difficulty being confirmed by Senate Republicans and Democrats, who are basically united in giving Wall Street lobbyists the governance they paid for. Of course, the main culpability is with Congressional Republicans, who are dead set against any meaningful consumer protection.
For that reason, they are likely to oppose the person Obama nominated instead of Warren, former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, who has acted forcefully to defend consumer interests. As David Lazarus, the knowledgeable business columnist for the Los Angeles Times, wrote, “President Obama shouldn’t have backed down” in the face of GOP opposition to Warren, because Republicans will probably also find Cordray unacceptable. The reason being that they don’t want a strong director for the consumer protection agency, or even the agency itself.
What remains to be seen is if Obama will play their game or finally take the gloves off. If we should have learned anything in the last decade of financial malfeasance by the banking industry, it is that consumers are in desperate need of protection. If Obama goes to battle for Cordray and he proves to be a strong director for the new agency, I will stand corrected, but the president’s abandonment of the brilliant and dedicated Warren is hardly an auspicious beginning.
Robert Scheer is the author of The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street (Nation Books).
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2. posted by: Beethoven1 at 07/20/2011 @ 1:54pm
I agree. I assume you are speaking of JFK. (correct me if I am wrong)
The decline in America's role in the world, the decline in our education system, the switch from our industrial belt to a rust belt, the transfer of wealth from that former industrial belt to British owned banks in Southern states to fuel the emerging CIA controlled conservative movement, the downward spiral of our economy, the continuation of the Vietnam War and countless other brush wars, the buying-up of Democratic Party assets by Wall St. and their corruption by the CIA -- all began immediately after the British government ordered the assassination of JFK along with more murders of our national leaders & many, many leaders of the civil rights & black power movements. Johnson tried to halt some of this but was scared out of office. Nixon accelerated the decline in America. Carter (under Brzezinski) institutionalized much of the decline. Reagan flip-flopped but the decline continued. Clinton had no clue what was happening to the country or, eventually, to him. Bush, well, no need to say anything about him. And Obama (under Brzezinski) is just Bush on steroids.
So, Robert, when will you call for Obama's impeachment as all true progressives are now doing?
Continued from below...either way, you end up dead, and that is the direction this country is heading. We need somebody with some intestinal fortitude as president, not another corporate suck-up pretending to be a man of the people.
Now, the last president who did stand against the above mentioned scoundrels was deep sixed by the very same scoundrels, but he was a real president for his very short tenure and probably the last real one the people had.
4. posted by: Michael Green at 07/20/2011 @ 10:56am Report abusive | Ignore This User
.... but I increasingly find my friends on the left to be so hopelessly certain of everything in the world that they truly are nothing more than the mirror image of the far right. _____________________________________________________________________________________________
I don't know how old you are, but just in my roughly 50 years existing on this planet, I've seen this country shift to the right and it took a hard right during the Bush Cheney years....it did another hard right under Reagan, but the Bush/Cheney administrations took us way further than before. I was one of the fools who actually bought into the Change we could hope for only to see that president put Larry Summers and other Chicago School Wallstreet insiders in charge to see to it that wall street and the banks were protected and the people not only got the bill, but are now getting screwed to pay the bill that the banks, wall street and the pentagon have run up.
A real president would have stepped forward and taken these aholes on from the get go even if it meant one term and even risked ducking bullets that would no doubt be fired from the right wing corporate plutocracy running this country. But, Obama is either playing it safe, or is one of them. Take your pick. Death by a thousand slices is the same as death by one wound....either way, you end up dead, and that... 5. posted by: michael26 at 07/20/2011 @ 1:51pm
Obama is another phony Democrat. Clinton had campaigned as a "New Democrat," which meant Republican. Obama is a Clinton clone.
I never thought Obama had any spine. His PRESENT VOTES in the Illinois state legislature indicated to me that he did not want to take positions for fear of critcism.
Obama had no record when he ran for the presidency. Therefore, I do not understand why anyone is disappointed. "Hope and change" mean nothing when there is virtually no political record to examine. People voted for a person who was unknown. A record of substance is needed before electing anyone to high office. Obama was hyped by the media as a savior to the world. At least the cult mentality of Obamamania is over and done with.
It was obvious long ago that Obama never had any intentions of appointing Elizabeth Warren. He wouldn't want his campaign contributions from Wall Street to suffer as a result.
3. posted by: Michael Green at 07/20/2011 @ 9:56am
What is your point here Michael?
We shouldn't question Obama's judgment, even if we aren't privy to it?
In our wonderful democracy with not a shred of transparency, all we can do is make inferences about what is happening based on what has happened.
Why don't you try to dispute (with factual refutation) one point that Mr. Scheer has made in his article as a starting point.
Our president gives us a lot to be disappointed about after such brilliant campaign. A public option for healthcare, troop removal from Iraq, tax increase on the wealthy, jobs and now Ms Warren's appointment.
But would any possible alternative now running for the office be more attractive?
Well, as Shadow has pointed out, and now Robert Scheer is saying. Obama is one of them. Meaning that he's a wall street employee in the White House as we Larry Summer, Timmy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Rubin and the rest of and of course all of the GOP/tea party and a good portion of those pretending to be dems in the house and senate. This country needs an enema.
Boy, it must be really nice to be Robert Scheer. I'd like to be Robert Scheer. That way, I would be inside the Oval Office and know everything discussed, and inside the heads of Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren so I could know everything they think. I expect better than this Tom Friedman-style know-it-all garbage from Scheer and The Nation, but I increasingly find my friends on the left to be so hopelessly certain of everything in the world that they truly are nothing more than the mirror image of the far right.
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