Tuesday, March 31, 2009

My vision of Obama ftoday right now

To be frank, I'm quite disappointed.

I think he is a corporate centrist, a tad bit left of center, perhaps, but not much. He's an establishment guy all the way, meaning the corporate kleptocratic plutocracy. I think he's quite intelligent, but not brilliant like I had hoped, not at all. And he gets a "C" for not seeing and ACTING past the current corpotocracy. Instead with Summers and Geithner, he's rescuing and solidifying it.

Required Reading

"The Big Takeover" - Matt Taibi - ROLLING STONE

"The Quiet Coup"
- Simon Johnson -THE ATLANTIC -

"A Scary Corporate Coup is Underway -- We've Got to Stop It"
- William Greider - Alternet (from THE NATION) -

Please sign the petition at the last article, if you agree.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

TO DO LIST - ASAP

Five essential things that must be done, and aren't being proposed by the Administration or Congress (or anyone outside of the progressive blogs):

1) Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.

2) Stop the exemption for over-the-counter derivatives.

3) Rescind the Bankruptcy Bill of 2005.

4) Temporary "nationalization" (or call it another word) of the "too big to fail" zombie banking houses. Break them up again. "Too big to fail" is to big to exist in a sustainble healthy economy.

5) Look into closing the Fed, and let the gov't "own" the
money supply, not a private unaccountable front for the
very wealthy and more than average power/status-hungry
elite using The Fed.)

--------------

Also, get rid of Geithner/Summers; replace them with people who will work for Main St. and the public interest, not in the interests of the plutocratic elite on Wall St. who (along with their paid-for cohorts in governemnt, who lifted regulations above) got us into this mess.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Blog post of the week (or month)!

Terrific diary entry at Daily Kos today -

Enough with Geithner/Krugman. There's Work to Do
by thereisnospoon
Tue Mar 24, 2009 at 03:09:50 PM PDT

link

MUST READ!


Sunday, March 22, 2009

Your comment saddens me

A particularly good comment imo from "Valkyrie607" in Paul Krugman's blog
"Despair Over Financial Policy" Mar 21 09 -

link here

Read the Krugman post first.

Here's my comment (it's awaiting moderation at the NYT currently (032209_0231H):

I saw this coming when he chose Geithner and Summers last November. I was hoping to be proved wrong, or at least wrong enough that there would be serious reform and re-regulation, certainly not the view that the current set-up is wonderfully sound (!). That’s cratering (or colluding) with the Wall St. rich special interests, to put it bluntly. Progressives and others unhappy with this state of events need to start putting pressure on the Administration. The last nation-wide right-left spectrum wide outrage at the AIG bonuses show that populism is growing and booming loudly. Let’s have progressive populist pressure for Obama and his treasury to change course.

— racetoinfinity

===================

WOW! The following comment from 'bob paine' is blunt and I'm afraid it's what I've been thinking (except I haven't gone as far as to forecast very hard times)

  1. 186. March 21, 2009 5:46 pm Link

    TYhe President has completely surrounded and cushioned himself with the boys from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.

    These monsters are making themselves and their family and friends whole before everything falls completely apart.

    The idea that the President was for the common man or the little guy has been exposed as nothing but deceit.

    The time has arrived to prepare for very hard times.

    — bob paine



Monday, March 16, 2009

SCRUB, RINSE, REPEAT

Props. to Rachel Maddow for the title....

FOUR essential things that must be done, and aren't being proposed by the

Administration or Congress (or anyone outside of the progressive blogs):

1) Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.

2) Stop the exemption for over-the-counter derivatives.

3) Rescind the Bankruptcy Bill of 2005.

4) Temporary "nationalization" (or call it another word) of the "too big to fail" zombie

banking houses.

--------------

Also, get rid of Geithner/Summers; replace them with people who will work for Main St. and the public interest, not in the interests of the plutocratic elite on Wall St. who (along with their paid-for cohorts in government, who lifted regulations above) got us into this mess.

Obama may have been naive to hire them, getting advice that they were "insiders," and only "insideders" can fix this, but then I wonder how informed he is? Easier to believe that Obama has taken a lot of money from big Finance and/or knows he must please them basically to get anything else done.

Nonetheless, Geither/Summers must go!

Friday, March 13, 2009

Three things that must be done


1) Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.

2) Stop the exemption for over-the-counter derivatives.

3) Rescind the Bankruptcy Bill of 2005
.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Geithner and Summers must go!

I'm calling on Geithner and Summers to resign. Both are Robert ("Citigroup") Rubin acolytes from the Clinton era, and very cozy with Wall St, hardly the change we need.

Monday, March 02, 2009

PLEASE SIGN PETITION URGING OBAMA TO NATIONALIZE INSOLVENT BIG BANKS

I urge you to sign this petition:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: IT'S TIME TO NATINONALIZE THE INSOLVENT BANKS.

link -

click HERE

It's the only way to stop this free-fall.

See this excellent post at Huff Post by Robert Kuttner that I read yesterday pertaining to this -

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/geithners-folly_b_170928.html

(One thing he writes is that Obama doesn't have to call it "nationalization", which is red meat to dumb ditto heads and "Joe the Plumber" admirers - he can "restructure" them through the FDIC. )

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Martin Wolf voice of sanity save one blind? spot

Obama & team are BLOWING it by shielding the following boards and shareholders of pain and loss they should have to face by not restructuring thru the FDIC (alternative to nationalization) BoA, Citigroup/bank and any other huge zombie banks.

The mistake he makes is to call Obama's team "fresh" and "unconnected from the making of the mess" - Even in Britain someone like Wolf would know their role under Clinton and Robert Rubin - it's actually fishy that he would say that, unless he HOPED they would restart their consciousnesses and beliefs. I think it's fishy that Obama appointed Summers and Geithner - smells of being puppets of the big banking interests. We will see what the stress test is like, and if it weeds out zombies however big, i.e. BoA and Citigroup.

See video of Martin Wolf being intvwed. by F. Zakaria on CNN this morning (090103) (Mar 01 09) -

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2009/03/01/gps.martin.wolf.intv.cnn