The most heartening response to his speech was the reaction on Wall Street--Dive! Dive! Dive! Perhaps the reason they were concerned about the lack of specifics was that they fear that he will pull back the curtains and reveal them in all of their nakedness. They all know what will happen to the biggest banks in this eventuality. The plunge was probably exactly because they just realized that the response was not going to be: "Here is some more money for your regrettable situation. We are certain you will do the right thing."
I have yet to see a "public-private partnership" that was not a euphemism for putting public money into private pockets. But what may save the taxpayers further donations to financial criminals is that the process requires private sector money, and these guys know too much to offer any. This would then lead to effectively to nationalization--which is where many of them belong for the time being. Then Obama can present effective nationalization as a last resort that he did everything possible to avoid.
The other shoes to drop will be how they deal with credit default swaps and other derivatives and how they deal with all of the shady deals involving off balance sheet SIVs, conduits, etc. I would hope that these are, effectively, to be treated as fraudulent transactions, following logic laid out in a recent thread by Jake.
But again we must wait and see. Wait too long and it may well be too late. But what has happened to date could be an astute way to be forced into doing what needs to be done while being seen as having tried all alternatives to avoid so doing. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
is that the process requires private sector money, and these guys know too much to offer any
Right on the button ARG... "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
But what has happened to date could be an astute way to be forced into doing what needs to be done while being seen as having tried all alternatives to avoid so doing.
> socialism <
Given the extremely hostile media landscape and the populace steeped in right-wing bullshit he has to work with I'm not sure that this isn't a necessary sleight-of-hand.
So he is dependent on his advisers and appointees.
Plus Obama knows bugger-all about economics and finance.
That is actually a plus.
Because everything his advisers know is based upon a specific - demonstrably useless - legal paradigm.
I am sure he is bright enough to recognise a solution when he sees one, particularly if - as I believe - this solution involves legal innovation. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
everything his advisers know is based upon a specific - demonstrably useless - [legal] paradigm
Because he knows bugger all about economics and finance he lacks the self-confidence to tell his advisors to bugger off. Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
Obama does have a good mind and temperament. Given the state of popular belief in the USA, it is hard to see who could have been elected who would have a better opportunity. Sanity has very few supporters today in the USA. Obama has the opportunity to shift the popular views of these matters. He needs to start driving important points home with rhetorical sledge hammers rather than dropping coy hints that he really does understand the problem. It is hard to see how having more Republican influence in Congress in 2010 and/or having a Republican president in 2012 would help. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
he has to avoid moving so fast that he is vulnerable to being defined by his opponents as some black radical out to subjugate the existing social structure.
I say this wholly unrelated to the rest of the discussion: Not gonna happen. How do you go about portraying Obama as a black radical now if it failed miserably during the campaign, when people didn't know a lot about him? And how do you do that now when he's sitting on a +40 net approval in the face of a -30 net disapproval for the Republicans?
That ship has sailed. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Obama got a pass during the campaign because there really was no basis for calling him a "black radical." Best they could do was to attempt to smear him with guilt by association with his preacher, whose great "sin" was to see and diagnose the class and race biases, structures and institutions in our society. Obama himself had been very careful to avoid ever doing anything that could be used to label him a radical. In fact he is not a radical. He represents the essence of the establishment view of what the USA should be--wonderful opportunity that does not challenge that very establishment.
But, if he is seen to do by choice things that attack that establishment, that will change in a New York minute. I am reminded of the Mexican proverbial saying: "Mata un pero y siempre se llama 'matapero'!" (Kill one dog and forever be called a dog-killer!) That is why it is important that he be seen to be forced into nationalization of banks, etc.
That said, I do not think he is at all eager to do anything that undercuts the financial establishment. I can only hope that he understands quickly enough that there is no substitute for directly confronting the core problems of the financial situation: insolvency and the criminality that led to it. I prefer that hope to councils of despair. If he fails to rise to that challenge, and soon, then we all are in for a very tough decade or two. It might prove a blessing to have Geithner laughed off the stage early on. It could be the kind of slap in the face Obama needs to force him to confront the true depth of the problem. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
someone on booman said while he doesn't know it yet, geithner was just picked for O to throw under the bus when the rest of the economy tanks...
and then? ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
I'm not seeing any real evidence for that, and some evidence - like the Gregg pick, and the unfounded supergenius rumours that this would give the Dems 60 - that there's not so much of the supergenius happening.
At the moment we don't really have enough data to tell - and what there is doesn't suggest supergenius, more a deliberate and rather fluffy policy of 'Why can't we all get along'?
I wouldn't be unhappy if Obama turns out to be a strategic trapmeister - but I would be surprised.
There's some logic to Judd Gregg without believing the Supergenius idea. The Republican who's replacing him is, as I understand it, a fair bit more moderate. And the other thing is, it gives Gregg a chance to bow out gracefully if he, as I suspect he might have been, on the fence about reelection, while also giving the Dem candidate in 2010 a clear path in a blue state.
And, given that Rahmbo is monitoring the Census, Gregg can't do any real damage, even though that was never really a danger to begin with (contrary to the ranting and hyperventilating of the blogosphere, the ComSec has very, very little influence on Census).
But the rest I agree with. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
But, it turns out, no, when he was saying that, he was still in interview for position mode ... he didn't really mean it.
Probably he's been a Senator for long enough that the idea that he would promise something in one week and be expected to stick to it the next week was an entirely foreign notion. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
