Obama demands deep cutbacks to pay for Wall Street bailout By Bill Van Auken 23 September 2008
As the Bush administration and Congress continued negotiations Monday on a trillion-dollar bailout package for Wall Street, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama delivered a speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin in which he promised to carry out sweeping cuts in government spending and impose strict fiscal discipline on the US government. “If we hope to meet the challenges of our time, we must make difficult choices,” Obama declared. “As president, I will go through the entire federal budget, page by page, line by line, and I will eliminate the programs that don’t work and aren’t needed.” As with all of his speeches, Obama’s remarks were pitched simultaneously to two audiences. In an appeal for popular support, he laced his speech with demagogy about “addressing not just the crisis on Wall Street, but the crisis on Main Street” along with condemnations of greedy CEOs and unethical lobbyists. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/obam-s23.shtml Paulson warns: No limits on CEO pay By Barry Grey 23 September 2008 Speaking on the “Fox News Sunday” program, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson opposed proposals from some Democrats as well as Republicans that the Bush administration’s plan for a massive taxpayer bailout of the most powerful banks and financial institutions include provisions limiting the pay of CEOs whose companies benefit from the government handout. Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs whose wealth is estimated at $700 million, argued that including any such provision would result in banks refusing to participate in the program. As the New York Times reported Monday, “Mr. Paulson said that he was concerned that imposing limits on the compensation of executives could discourage companies from participating in the program. “’If we design it so it’s punitive and so institutions aren’t going to participate, this won’t work the way we need it to work,’ Mr. Paulson said...” http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/ceo-s23.shtml Banks race to profit from US bailout By Barry Grey 23 September 2008 The announcement of a virtually open-ended government bailout of Wall Street has set off a frenzied competition among the biggest banks and financial firms to grab the lion’s share of the super profits to be reaped from the program. Banks, brokerage houses, insurance firms, mortgage lenders, private equity companies and asset managers are furiously lobbying the Bush administration and Congress to make sure that the legislation authorizing the bailout gives them the biggest possible share in the spoils. Behind the public speech-making and posturing by administration officials, presidential candidates and congressmen, a sordid campaign of influence-peddling and vote-buying is under way, which will determine the details of the bailout law that is expected to be passed either this week or next. Tens of billions of dollars in corporate profits and billions more in personal windfalls for senior executives and big investors are at stake. The plan drawn up by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson not only allows the biggest financial firms to rid themselves of virtually worthless assets that are driving down their stock and slashing their profits, it provides vast opportunities for the winners in the money race to realize huge gains from the management of the program and the ultimate resale of the assets by the government. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/fren-s23.shtml Who is Henry Paulson? By Tom Eley 23 September 2008 The plan to rescue the US financial industry arrogates virtually unlimited money and power over the financial affairs of the state to the office of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Paulson is a figure with a long history of intimate connections to the political and financial elite. In 1970, fresh from the Masters program of the Harvard Business School, Paulson entered the Nixon administration, working first as staff assistant to the assistant secretary of defense. In 1972-73, Paulson worked as office assistant to John Erlichman, assistant to the president for domestic affairs. Erlichman was one of the key figures involved in organizing President Richard Nixon’s notorious “plumbers” unit that carried out illegal covert operations against the president’s political opponents, including espionage, blackmail, and revenge. Ehlichman resigned in 1973, and in 1975 he was convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury, and conspiracy, and was imprisoned for 18 months. Utilizing his connections, Paulson went to work for Goldman Sachs in 1974. In a 2007 feature, the British newspaper the Guardian wrote, “Not only was he well connected enough to get the job [in the Nixon White House], but well connected enough to resign in the thick of the Watergate scandal without ever getting caught up in the fallout. He went straight to Goldman back home in Illinois.” http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/paul-s23.shtml --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
