Obama's Economic Dream Team?

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By Stephen Lendman (about the author) Page 5 of 5 page(s)

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A University of California Berkeley economist, she's been a career academic thus far and will become Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) chairperson. She's a student of the Great Depression, a monetarist, reportedly centrist, and according to UC Berkeley Professor Brad DeLong she's receptive to short-run fiscal stimulus but believes that large deficits are harmful.

Paul Volker

Now age 81, he's a Trilateralist, corporatist, former (Rockefeller) Chase Manhattan Bank executive, and ideologically far to the right of center. He earlier served as Fed chairman from 1979 under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan until Alan Greenspan replaced him in 1987. He's been a key Obama economic advisor and will head a special Economic Recovery Advisory Board to oversea financial markets stabilization policies.

He's no friend of working people and proved it during his tenure as Fed chairman. In fighting high 1970s inflation, he engineered the 1981 - 82 recession by raising the Fed funds rate to 20% in June 1981 (compared to 1% currently and nominally near zero).

In fact, his role was far more than fighting inflation. It was to destroy family farms, crush labor, reduce wages, lower living standards, send unemployment soaring, rev up deindustrialization, and supercharge the early years of financialization and casino capitalism. In August 1981, he openly praised Reagan's firing of 11,000 striking PATCO air traffic controllers, an act that told business that the day of worker demands was over and corporate interests above all others would be served.

Volker's been out of Washington for a while, and as one observer puts it: He's "like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime." He'll continue bailing out bankers, the auto giants as well, aggressively serve business interests overall, and do it at the expense of working people who'll end up worse off than ever under him and the entire Obama economic team. It's not "change to believe in" unless you're a Wall Street banker assured of getting no other kind.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM - 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

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I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.

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