Obama’s Moment is Passing Quickly: "He should seize the moment, shitcan his inept economic team"

[Better Believe It]

Obama’s Moment is Passing Quickly
by Dave Lindorff
March 20, 2009

The actions of Obama's Chief Financial Adviser Larry Summers and his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in permitting the payment of $165 million in bonuses to AIG executives (Summers, according to the Wall Street Journal, actually pressed Sen. Chris Dodd, D-CT, to secretly remove a bar to the payment of such bonuses from the bailout bill) and the storm of public outrage that has followed public disclosure of those payments, provides President Obama, whose administration is stumbling badly on many fronts, to turn things around and avoid political disaster.

He should promptly demand Geithner's and Summers' resignations, and should also fire the CEO of AIG, Edward Liddy (as 80% owner of AIG, the US has the power to do that anytime). It would also be a good idea at the same time to fire the CEOs of all the leading banks that are at this point surviving on government bailouts.

This would allow Obama to correct the fundamental mistake he made during the transition period following the November election in installing a bunch of Clinton-era economic advisors and Bush holdovers to be his economic team.

The US economy is in disastrous shape, and it is going to take new ideas, and people untarnished by the last 30 years of deregulatory excess and unsavory links to Wall Street, to rescue it. Obama has no shortage of good people to turn to: Nobel economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman, former World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz and economist James Galbraith all spring immediately to mind as people who could offer new and better approaches to addressing both the immediate crisis and the longer-term challenge of restoring the health of the nation's economy, and of making it work for everyone, instead of just the wealthy few.

In any event, it seems clear that if this president who spoke during his campaign of "hope and change" continues to cater to the bankers and the corporate interests that want to see no major revamping of the economic system and the regulatory apparatus, he is headed for a one-term presidency--and a sad and failed one at that.

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/20-10