It sure is "horrifying"--to use Paul Krugman's word--that Obama will not seize those foundering banks, but is instead proposing to blow billions of our money on their toxic assets, far in excess of the latters' worth.
It's horrifying, but it shouldn't be surprising, considering Wall Street's long investment in Barack Obama. Way back in the spring of 2007, that presidential hopeful outdid all the other candidates at raising money from the employees of Wall Street's top investment banks: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/17/AR2007041701688.html By June of 2008, the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) was noting that "Wall Street seems to have selected Barack Obama for its own major investment this election cycle": http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/06/wall-street-bets-on-obama-for.html And here's a fascinating tidbit about one bank in particular: UBS, the Swiss behemoth that lost billions when that huge stink-bomb of subprime mortgages exploded. "For reasons no one can fathom, UBS of Switzerland decided that it had a larger appetite for mortgage-related instruments than any other bank in the world," reported MSN.com three weeks before Election Day. "Its balance sheet became obese with the junk and forced it to take what seemed like a write-off a week. UBS has fired so many people that it is surprising it still has someone to man the switchboard." http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/2008/10/16/ubs-crisis-global-bank-trouble-is-getting-worse.aspx So it's worth noting here that Team Obama got over $1 million from UBS Americas, whose top dog was quite smitten by the candidate when they sat down to chat: "When I sat down with him, I found him to be unbelievably refreshing and smart and thoughtful," gushed CEO Robert Wolf: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2008/db20080212_645487.htm (Last month, Wolf was appointed to the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, to lend a hand to Geithner, Summers and the other "centrists" tasked with cleaning up the very mess they helped to make.) 2. So here's another reason why Barack Obama won the last election--aside from his charisma, the absurd opposing ticket, the unprecedented turnout, and the extraordinary vigilance of the election monitors (and, as I and others have reported in detail, the last- minute deposition of Mike Connell, and Karl Rove's consequent decision not to steal that contest, too). Obama/Biden also won because Wall Street was now pushing for the Democrats to win the White House, which marked a big reversal of their prior practice. Thus Obama was a candidate of "change"--and so was Hillary Clinton, the two of them receiving most of the Big Money poured forth in that race (the most expensive presidential contest ever run). According to the CRP, the top campaign donor corporation in 2008--that is, the biggest donor to all candidates--was Goldman Sachs (at least $5 million), followed by Citigroup ($4.2 million), then J.P. Morgan Chase ($4.1 million). The industry association that donated most was the National Association of Realtors ($3.2 million): http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/10/us-election-will-cost-53-billi.html Now, certainly Obama also got a lot of dough, in small donations, from people just like you and me. But We the People weren't the primary engine moving his campaign. True, 48% of his donations were under $200--but 43% were over $2300, while 10% were for $4600, the maximum amount allowable. And Wall Street was among his biggest backers. From the "Securities and Investment" companies, Obama got $12.6 million, while McCain got $7.9 million: http://www.worldrecordsacademy.org/society/most_expensive_presidential_campaign-US_Election_sets_world_record_80426.htm 3. With Wall Street thus supporting him, moreover, Obama reaped not just those millions but --no less important--the warm affections of the corporate media, which never would have treated him so nicely if their parent companies were not entirely confident that he would serve their interests. For a good counter-example, recall the media's hostile treatment of John Edwards, whose anti-business stance scared the bejeezus out of the plutocracy--as Reuters reported in an article ("U.S. corporate elites fear candidate Edwards") that ran nowhere in this country when it came out in January of 2008: http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7217369 "Open attacks on the business elite are seldom heard from mainstream White House candidates in America, despite skyrocketing CEO pay, rising income inequality, and a torrent of scandals in corporate boardrooms and on Wall Street," wrote reporter Kevin Drawbaugh, who quoted several business lobbyists describing Edwards's run in catastrophic terms. "He has gone to this angry populist, anti-business rhetoric that borders on class warfare," said one. An Edwards presidency, said another, would be "'a disaster' for his well-heeled industrialist clients." That sentiment throughout the boardrooms and penthouses had already skewed the media's coverage of Edwards's campaign, which was not so much reported as attacked, with story after story on his haircut and his mansion and his lecture fees, etc. All of this was meant to cast his economic program as a sham, because of his own wealth (as if, say, FDR had lived like a sharecropper). The media's anti-Edwards drive was so pronounced that several sharp observers, including Jeff Cohen and Greg Sargent, wrote about it: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/31/1570/ http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/10/ny_times_we_onl.php So ferocious was the press's animus that they continued bashing Edwards long after he had quit the race. Of course, they went ballistic on his extra-marital affair--while staying absolutely mute on Sarah Palin's, although she was running and he wasn't, and even though she postured as a paragon of "family values" (and he hadn't). The double standard was especially egregious, since both those scandals had been broken by the National Enquirer, and yet that tabloid was somehow illegitimate in Palin's case alone. Clearly, that belated shower of mud was meant to finish Edwards off politically, so that he might not ever rise again. Thus he was destroyed for threatening the Big Money-- much as Eliot Spitzer too was taken down for having (prematurely) spoken out against the crimes of Wall Street and their likely consequences. There as well the media did its usual plutocratic job, by simply piling on, refraining pointedly from raising any questions as to why the government was nailing Spitzer for so slight a crime, and why he must resign, while Sen. David Vitter, who had also played around with hookers, stayed in office. That sinner could stay on the job because he was a Bush Republican (just like Sen. Larry Craig), while those rogue Democrats were driven out, perhaps for good. 4. Obama, on the other hand, is no rogue Democrat, but the accommodating type, who wouldn't be where he is now if Wall Street and its huge affiliates had not blessed his campaign; and so he's pushing forward with his bank plan, strangely deaf to all the thunder that may bring the house down yet, if and when things don't turn out the way he's hoping that they will. And with that growing thunder there is nothing wrong: on the contrary. Wall Street's apologists throughout the media have been haughtily deploring all this public wrath, because they fear us more than anything--which is surely why they backed Obama, figuring that he would not just safeguard their own interests but also keep us quiet, with his hypnotic oratory and amazing air of calm. But it's not working; and it shouldn't work. We have to speak out forcefully against the mammoth crap-shoot that Obama and his men are playing with our money, and our future. Otherwise we'll all go down, because this country's rotten politics is killing us, even with Barack Obama, not his heinous predecessor, at the helm. So let's all face the fact that things are likely not to "change" at all, unless we force him to it. MCM --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Mark Crispin Miller's "News From Underground" newsgroup. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to newsfromunderground-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com OR go to http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground and click on the "Unsubscribe or change membership" link in the yellow bar at the top of the page, then click the "Unsubscribe" button on the next page. 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