Obama Cheerleader For Banking Elite

Obama doesn't get it ~ He is not only beholden to elite banking interests but is also their cheerleader much like George W Bush was the cheerleader for Cheney's and big oil's neocon pipedream in the middle east. This is the beginning of the end ~ for Americans will soon no longer accept this top down approach of bailing out the financial interests that caused this massive economic crisis: Allen L Roland 

I voted for Obama in 2008 ~ but I voted for change and I still have not seen dramatic evidence of it . I've heard the words, as in Obama's speech last night to a joint session of Congress but I still haven't seen the action needed to convince me that Obama understands his mandate from the American people for true change. The top down approach of creating more bank credit for consumers who are up to their eyeballs in debt will not turn this Depression around and cause Americans to spend and inflate the same credit bubble that just burst. 

How the US Economy Was Lost

By Paul Craig Roberts 

February 24, 2009

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22087.htm

Excerpts: "The bald fact is that the combination of ignorance, negligence, and ideology that permitted the crisis to happen is still present and is blocking any remedy. Either the people in power in Washington and the financial community are total dimwits or they are manipulating an opportunity to redistribute wealth from taxpayers, equity owners and pension funds to the financial sector... How long will Americans permit “their” government to rip them off for the sake of the financial interests that caused the problem? Obama’s cabinet and National Economic Council are filled with representatives of the interest groups that caused the problem. The Obama administration is not a government capable of preventing a catastrophe.... The demise of America’s productive economy left the US economy dependent on finance, in which the US remained dominant because the dollar is the reserve currency. With the departure of factories, finance went in new directions. Mortgages, which were once held in the portfolios of the issuer, were securitized. Individual mortgage debts were combined into a “security.” The next step was to strip out the interest payments to the mortgages and sell them as derivatives, thus creating a third debt instrument based on the original mortgages... This was the most shameful and most mindless form of speculation. Gamblers were betting hands that they could not cover. The US regulators had abandoned their posts. The American financial institutions abandoned all integrity. As a consequence, American financial institutions and rating agencies are trusted nowhere on earth. "

And right now we are looking at over 650 trillion dollars in derivatives bets which involves most of the major banks who can not possibly cover that indebtedness.

The first step toward financial recovery is transparency and the truth ~ Obama delivered little of either last night and the stock market and Americans will not be reassured.

Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2009/02/25.html

Cartoon courtesy of Pat Oliphant / Washington Post