Obama's Up To His Neck In The Economic Sleaze

You should go listen to Democracy Now, from Wednesday, this past week, n ot only for the comprehensive critique of the whole 'collapse' narrative, but especially--if you're one of those who believes we'll be saved by the Great Mocha Hope--for the discussion of who are Obama's advisors on this, and the politics of his replies.

HUDSON: ...You’ll see big fish eat little fish. The strong are going to win out. The people who are not going to be bailed out are going to be the pension funds, the labor funds, the small investors. You’re going to—the government has come down on the side of the sharks. And what they did yesterday is to lock in and prevent any Democratic administration from coming in and cleaning up the mess. The people who’ve made the mess are now in control.

AMY GOODMAN: But Obama is not against this.

MICHAEL HUDSON: You know, that’s true. He is not against it, and it was, after all, a Democratic president, Clinton, who repealed Glass-Steagall. And it was a Democratic Treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, who supported all of this. So they’re the—

AMY GOODMAN: (Rubin...)Top adviser to Obama.

MICHAEL HUDSON: That’s right, the Treasury secretary. Yes, and still the top adviser. So, you’ve had both—I guess you could say the Republicans are a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street, the Democrats are a partially owned subsidiary.

AMY GOODMAN: Nomi Prins?

NOMI PRINS: Well, yeah. Robert Rubin was at Goldman. So is the current Treasury secretary, Hank Paulson. So are a number of people in Washington. And you have that situation where you have people with speculative sort of minds running this concept of free market through Washington, which has created this complete catastrophe in the financial sector.

It will get worse, because the fact is these new conglomerates—the JPMorgan/Bear Stearns, the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch—they are larger, more risky entities than they were before the happening, and they have not disclosed the risks that they have. I worked in some of these companies. You cannot merge risk—you know, you cannot merge risk systems between the products within your own company. So when you start merging tremendously big companies, there is no hope in any sort of short timeframe the you are going to actually understand that risk. And there’s no need to report it to our government, because it’s not required. So it will get worse.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Nomi used the word “free markets.” Obviously, this is not a free market. They say they’re acting on behalf of Adam Smith. Adam Smith said that no government has ever repaid its debts. And it could be said that no private sector has, either. So, this is not a free market; this is a guaranteed gamble for Wall Street against industry and against labor.

It has been said so often I am sure everyone is tired of hearing it, but:
WE ARE SOOOOOO FUCKED!!!