Obama has left intact a brain dead banking system that is out of control

[leftchick]

Taking on the banking cabal

Engdahl: President Obama has left intact a brain dead banking system that is out of control


Speaking about President Obama's stimulus package and newly announced budget, William Engdahl says the fundamental causes of the economic crisis were missed. Until Obama reinstates Glass-Steigel restraints on banking which were repealed by the Clinton administration in 1999 and begins to re-regulate the financial system, there will not be a flow of healthy credit into the healthy economy.

Part 1....http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3353


Taking on the banking cabal Pt 2

Engdahl: Investment in infrastructure not enough; Obama must take on the banks


http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3355

F William Engdahl is an economist and author and the writer of the best selling book "A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order." Mr Engdhahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock in the early 1970s. Mr. Engdahl contributes regularly to a number of publications including Asia Times Online, Asia, Inc, Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine; Freitag and ZeitFragen newspapers in Germany and Switzerland respectively. He is based in Germany.

[Warpy]

1. He's also been in office six weeks.

Of course he's going to try to paste the old system together for the first few months. Remember, FDR spent two years trying to support the old prices by destroying farm produce in front of hungry people before it dawned on him that the way to support prices was to give those hungry people jobs to earn money to pay for things.

The point about Obama is that he has the chance to prove himself a pragmatist. We know the other party is wedded to dogma and incapable of changing with the conditions. With Obama we have a chance for a president who will adapt as the situation deteriorates, and it will.

Nothing he does now will stop a broken system from failing completely. If he does everything right and nothing wrong, we'll have a short, very deep recession followed by a slow recovery. If he does everything the way I think he will, we will have a long recession bordering on depression followed by recovery at a snail's pace.

If McCain had gotten in, we'd be heading for a full blown Depression with no hope of recovery.

[fascisthunter]

2. I Do Think You are right...

but I do appreciate people making a stink out fof the possibility that he hasn't done what really needs to be done yet...

In time, I think he will.

[leftchick]

6. I am sick of hoping

sadly I have not seen anything concrete to get us out of this mess.

[customerserviceguy]

3. I can understand the resentment

Everybody else is watching their hours being cut, their friends being laid off, and raises disappearing as the rest of the economy contracts. Sure, there will be some muckety-mucks at the top who might have to get anything over $250K in stock options, but none of the assholes who contributed to the problem are going to lose jobs.

[leftchick]

5. if he were listening to economists like this one, Krugman

and Roubini, he would know they have been screaming for weeks we are wasting money and running out of time. I also notice he is not really trying to fix our health care system when not one, single payer representative was invited to his summit. Actions speak louder than words and he so far has been no FDR. FDR relished being the enemy of the robber barons and wall street. Obama? Not so much.

So your rationalization is like saying we are headed off a cliff at 45 MPH vs 90 MPH. Swell.

[bowens43]

7. OMG!!!

He's been in office 6 weeks and hasn't cured all the ills of the world!!!!!!!


What the fuck were we thinking electing him???????

</sarcasm>

Unbelievable.....

[leftchick]

9. lol

I wish I lived in your world. :eyes:

[Warpy]

12. Nothing is going to prevent falling off this cliff

during the next couple of years and while doing the right things might shorten the time at the bottom, that's not how the world works. Everybody wants to preserve the world they know, even when it doesn't work any more.

In fact, doing the wrong things now will work to our favor since they'll all be disgraced ideas after we've been sitting at the bottom for a while.

I'll settle for the slower speed drop, thanks. More of us are likely to survive it.

[Odin2005]

14. If FDR had listened to Keynes the Depression would have not taken till WW2 to end.

FDR positioned himself as a centrist until 1934 because he was at heart a fiscal conservative, he was FORCED to go left by events.

[leftchick]

15. perhaps he wanted to

our current leader does not, so far.

watch this and get back at me.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x278863

[spanone]

4. he's President not God

[originalpckelly]

8. The whole system must be brought down.

In foreign countries, it is a ruthless empire that overthrows democratically elected governments and kills civilians frequently.

In our country, is it is a system of control that seeks to keep us fat and happy so we won't revolt, and gives us economic uncertainty because we don't control our own fate.

There are only two ideologies in Washington, D.C.:
1. Fuck them, we've got ours.
2. Bribe them with something so we can keep ours.

[readmoreoften]

13. Yup. I rec your comment.

[upi402]

10. at some point the plug will be pulled

but there is treasury future income to loot for now. Sorry grandkids of America but they need to feed on your brains!!!

[PurityOfEssence]

11. Jim Hightower's words ring true: "There's nothing in the middle of the road but dead armadillos and

yellow stripes."

For all his many strengths, Barack Obama is now and always has been a serial ultramoderate. This is not a time for pleasing or not offending everyone, it's a time for drastic action. This is not a situation for his standard tactics, this is not where one can avoid standing up to be counted or find a way to be on both sides of an issue. It's simple: are you with corporations, or are you with human beings? It really is that simple. It's also unavoidable, and it's time.

Declare that this is emergency intervention, appease the feudalists with pledges that private enterprise will once again reign supreme when the smoke clears, but employ the unemployed directly by the government for salary-dominated projects, regulate the markets and nationalize the insolvent banks NOW.

Pouring money into banks with hopes that they'll lend is ridiculous when we don't know their viability.

The whole bullshit leap of logic that was used to justify tax cuts for the wealthy is being used here, and it makes no sense. The concept was that if the wealthy paid less in taxes, they'd invest more. Says who? If the tax cuts had been contingent on investing instead of "trusting" this wild supposition, that would have been different. Similarly, giving huge wads of money to banks in hopes that they'll lend it out is stupid. If this kind of Frankensteinian resuscitation is the only thing our pathetic corporatist brains can allow us to do, then give the money with the REQUIREMENT that it be loaned. Why do we "trust" these people? Have they not amply proven their untrustworthiness and imbecility?

The real problem is that he's a committed corporatist and either actually believes that private enterprise is absolutely ESSENTIAL and INDISPENSABLE in every facet of life, or he's too hidebound with the habits of appeasing those who believe this. That's why the stimulus is funneled through private hands, and that's why appeasers on this board are PROUD of the fact that something like 90% of the moneys will be spent through private means. Such a statistic is something to be ashamed of and worried about, not proud of. This smacks of sucking up to the reactionaries. Fuck them; this is a time for solutions, not consensus with those who prefer downfall to ANY impediments to private enterprise.

This is idiotic; this is a crisis, and that's a time for governmental intervention. Such words are heresy to a corporatist, though, and so it goes.