Economic Team

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This has some very interesting reporting and take. It does confirm my very worst fears about Summers. I thought that when they picked his former underling as Treasury sect, and put Summers "under him" as head of the NEC, that this was just a way of appointing Summers as Treasury Sect without having to take all the shit that would come with that appointment, but that in fact, Summers was the defacto Sect. And he'd be running the show. And that would be bad news.

All of that appears to be true, and it makes me feel very disappointed in Obama.

But, there's some hopeful news. I guess now we will have to wait and see who wins. Summers is a tyrant though. I don't know that he can be pushed back or controlled in any way.

Biden v. Summers
100 Days
By Christopher Hayes
This article appeared in the February 23, 2009 edition of The Nation.
Dick Cheney used to brag about leaving the office of the president "stronger than we found it," and in some perverse, narrow sense he probably accomplished that for his office of vice president. The most influential vice president in history, Cheney succeeded in a near-total capture of the White House policy-making apparatus, transforming his office's role. This has left Joe Biden with, well, strange shoes to fill and no specific brief. But with the announcement on January 30 that he will be chairing the new White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families, it is clear that Biden is inserting himself forcefully into the economic policy debates in the new administration.


The main players in Barack Obama's economic team can be cleaved roughly into two groups: (1) center-right neoliberals like Larry Summers, head of the National Economic Council; his deputy, Diana Farrell; and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner; and (2) progressive labor-liberals like Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council; Biden's chief economic adviser, Jared Bernstein; and labor secretary nominee Hilda Solis.

In the Clinton administration über-neoliberal Robert Rubin famously won against labor-liberal Robert Reich, pushing privatization, deregulation and balanced budgets over a more robust welfare state. But in the intervening years wage stagnation, rising inequality and this financial crisis have pushed the neoliberals in a more progressive direction. It's hard to imagine the Larry Summers of 1993 saying that income inequality is the "defining issue of our time," as he recently did, or, for that matter, advocating a stimulus package that may run as high as $900 billion.

The problem is that Summers and Geithner seem to have retained their dispositional trust in the market and skepticism of public sector involvement. So instead of nationalizing banks, as many economists urge, they're reportedly busy crafting a plan for TARP II similar to former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's ill-fated attempt to purchase bad assets from the banks. According to The New Republic's Noam Scheiber, whenever someone proposes a policy that crosses Summers's delicate threshold for Big Government, he derides it as "Putinesque." Unfortunately, reviving the financial sector may require measures that would make even Putin blush.

On top of that, Summers has already come to dominate the White House economic policy shop. One person close to Obama's economic team told me that on economic policy, "it's looking like it's Larry's show." This leaves a disconcerting vacuum in the White House for a labor-liberal voice equal in stature and clout. Enter, perhaps, Joe Biden.

In December he named Bernstein, formerly of the labor-friendly, stoutly progressive Economic Policy Institute, to be his chief economic adviser, a position with no recent precedent. Bernstein then co-wrote the first economic report released by the transition team, which attempted to quantify the benefits of the president's proposed stimulus. He is one of the people present for the daily economic briefings to the president.

In the weeks before inauguration, Biden reached out to labor leaders, including the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney, confirming that he would be a strong advocate for them in the White House. And he has publicly supported "Buy American" provisions in the stimulus package that would require participating firms to purchase their materials from domestic companies--a measure that Summers pointedly refused to endorse during a recent briefing with reporters.

Biden is "really pushing hard" on "a more progressive populist approach to economic policy," says Mike Lux, the transition's liaison to the progressive movement. "I'm just delighted that there's somebody with his clout that's doing this, otherwise our side would be in a lot worse shape."

Biden's task force is charged with "improving work and family balance, restoring labor standards, including workplace safety," and "helping to protect middle-class and working-family incomes." Its first meeting will be in late February in Philadelphia and will focus on green jobs. "The purpose of the task force," a White House official told me, "is to keep the administration's focus as it develops its economic plans on the people who need to be helped the most, especially at a time when we have to bail out banks and financial institutions."

Task forces in Washington can be highly influential or just dog-and-pony shows. It's unclear yet which this is. But it bears watching just how much influence labor-liberals have. Will the administration move forcefully and quickly on the Employee Free Choice Act--which Biden said they want to get to "this year"--or stall and compromise it to death? Will they enact a large-scale foreclosure mitigation program and bankruptcy reform or continue to sluice money to banks exclusively? Will the "fiscal responsibility summit" slated for February be just a rhetorical sop to the entitlement hawks or the opening salvo in a new war against Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security?

In the meantime, the rhetoric, at least, has been encouraging. It didn't get a lot of attention, but on January 30 Obama made probably the most unabashedly pro-union statement of any president in at least sixty years. "I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem. To me it's part of the solution," he said at an event where he signed three executive orders reforming federal workforce policy. "We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests, because we know that you cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement."

I don't know if Larry Summers would agree, but maybe, if Joe Biden has anything to say about it, Summers's opinion won't matter.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090223/hayes/print

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And look at this; he's trying to cut Volcker out. Tyrant.

Obama has made some very bad decisions, even though Onceler will get annoyed at my saying so. But this is a chief one right here.

Summers is poison, and he should go now, before he does anymore damage. And that's all he'll do. Cause he's a tyrant, and that's what tyrants do. Damage.

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Paul Volcker has grown increasingly frustrated over delays in setting up the economic advisory group President Barack Obama picked the former Federal Reserve chairman to lead, people familiar with the matter said.

Volcker, 81, blames Obama’s National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers for slowing down the effort to organize the panel of outside advisers, the people said. Summers isn’t regularly inviting Volcker to White House meetings and hasn’t shown interest in collaborating on policy or sharing potential solutions to the economic crisis, they said.

Obama and Volcker will announce the members of the board and outline its functions at a White House event tomorrow, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said this afternoon.

While Summers, a former Treasury secretary, oversees the official White House economic policy apparatus, Obama tapped Volcker for a new Economic Recovery Advisory Board charged with injecting fresh, outside ideas into policy debates.

“When you have two strong, highly accomplished, driven people, it’s not unusual that there is going to be a battle over turf,” said James Cox, a professor at Duke University Law School in Durham, North Carolina. “I would hope that Obama doesn’t lose Volcker’s counsel. They need someone to help them think outside the box.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aaLzJZKNcc6Y

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obama:

you don't pay taxes, cool, come with me....you get caught not paying taxes, then wait, if i get you in, then cool, but if not, you must withdraw

yes (in unison) DEAR LEADER.....SALUTE

[blackascoal]

You heard it here first.

Larry Summers was all the proof I needed that Obambi was not as advertised .. and while everyone was telling me to "wait until he gets in office" and "give the guy a break", I was speaking to the incredible failure and lack of good judgement in selecting someone as sleazy and repugnant as Larry "non-white life is unimportant and women are inherently stupid" Summers.

Obambi's economic team is not a "team of rivals" as Obambi likes to claim. They are all the same and they all have followed the same failed economics theories that got us here and they all supported the Bush policies.

There simply is no intelligence if choosing the same people who supported the Bush economic polices while at the same time wailing against Bush economic policies.

AND, I've raised this question before .. why is every single member of Obambi's economic team .. and even everyone he even considered for that team, jewish? Is the wisdom here that only jews know how to manipulate economic policies .. which flys in the face of the failures of Greenspan and Rubin?

There is nothing "racist" or "anti-semitic" about the question as I wouild have the same question if everyone of them were black.

Obambi is in fact, a jewish creation.

I hate to say I told you so, but ....

[Cancel7]

You heard it here first.

Larry Summers was all the proof I needed that Obambi was not as advertised .. and while everyone was telling me to "wait until he gets in office" and "give the guy a break", I was speaking to incredible failure and lackof good judgement in selecting someone as sleazy and repugnant as Larry "non-white life is unimportant and women are inherently stupid" Summers.

Obambi's economic team is not a "team of rivals" as Obambi likes to claim. They are all the same and they all have followed the same failed economics theories that got us here and they all supported the Bush policies.

There simply is no intelligence if choosing the same people who supported the Bush economic polices while at the same time wailing against Bush economic policies.

AND, I've raised this question before .. why is every single member of Obmabi's economic team .. and even everyone he even considered for that team, jewish? Is the wisdom here that only jews know how to manipulate economic policies .. which flys in the face of the failures of Greenspan and Rubin?

There is nothing "racist" or "anti-semitic" about the question as I wouild have the same question if everyone of them were black.

I hate to say I told you so, but ....

Um I had not noticed that they were all Jewish. What about Melanie Barnes, she can't be Jewish? I don't know, I haven't even thought about that bac. IF anything I would think it's just a coincidence.

But you were right about Summers.

[Blackwater Lunchbreak]

Jews discovered how to manipulate society with representative currency during the middle ages in europe when they worked with fine metals and had the stongest safes around. People began keeping gold in their safes and getting a little ticket in return, to identify the amount in storage. Then people started just trading these claim tickets with each other without actually getting the gold out. Then the jews realized they could issue more tickets than there was gold in the safe. Voila. The insanity of fractional reserve lending is discoverd.

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Oh Jesus.

[Damocles]

I think it is just easy to blame all things economic on the Juden. I do think that it is possible to think the economic plan is more of the same thing with a bit of powdered sugar on it to make it look different and taste good at the first bite without also trying to blame all of one religio-ethnicity...

[Blackwater Lunchbreak]

I think it is just easy to blame all things economic on the Juden. I do think that it is possible to think the economic plan is more of the same thing with a bit of powdered sugar on it to make it look different and taste good at the first bite without also trying to blame all of one religio-ethnicity...

You're such a good little obedient goyim.

[Blackwater Lunchbreak]

Jews are especially immune to the consequences of their actions on the general population, because they can always flee to their ethnically supremacist homeland, being created for them with taxpayer funds.

[Damocles]

You're such a good little obedient goyim.

Seriously. One can fight against bad policy without trying to blame "Jews". It's silly to attempt to blame Jews, it would be as silly as blaming all of Islam for that group in Iran taking hostages during Jimmy Carter's pResidency.

[YesWeCan]

Jews are especially immune to the consequences of their actions on the general population, because they can always flee to their ethnically supremacist homeland, being created for them with taxpayer funds.

your mother must be proud

[Blackwater Lunchbreak]

your mother must be proud

DO you have an actual argument? I think people who can flee at a moment's notice to an entirely different state (maintained with american taxpayer dollars), are bound to not care as much about the ramifications of their ideas on the country. They can always leave. I believe their aim is to 'bust out' the u.s. soprano style and then move to israel.

[blackascoal]

Um I had not noticed that they were all Jewish. What about Melanie Barnes, she can't be Jewish? I don't know, I haven't even thought about that bac. IF anything I would think it's just a coincidence.

But you were right about Summers.

Barnes is not really part of the real economic team. She's head of domestic policy, but the core of his team are all jews .. and there is nothing coincidental about it. In fact, Obambi is surrounded in Jews, including his Chief of Staff .. and it isn't just his economic team ...

Larry Summers
Tim Geithner
Rahm Emmanuel
Robert Rubin
Dennis Ross
Jim Steinberg
Dan Shapiro
Dan Kurtzer
Martin Indyk
Richard Holbrooke
David Axelrod
David Plouffe

All senior advisers, all Jewish hard-liners, all male .. and there are more .. all from less than 2% of the American population.

Christina Romer who has a role in economic policy is married to a Jew.

Obambi's appearance in front of AIPAC should have sounded alarms.

He Disregarded the unanimous US National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran stopped working on nuclear weapons five years ago, and ignoring the continued certification by the International Atomic Energy Agency that none of the nuclear material for Iran’s civilian nuclear reactor has been diverted to weapons use, Obambi continued the AIPAC propaganda and accused Iran of “development of a nuclear weapon” and vowing “to prevent that from happening.”

I also knew the Israeli offensive against Gaza would end just before Obambi took office.

IF you think Summers is bad, wait until you get a look at Dennis Ross.

America has been conned again.

[blackascoal]

I think it is just easy to blame all things economic on the Juden. I do think that it is possible to think the economic plan is more of the same thing with a bit of powdered sugar on it to make it look different and taste good at the first bite without also trying to blame all of one religio-ethnicity...

That's not what I'm doing at all .. what I said about Obambi being surrounded in Jews is a statement in fact and is why even Jews call him the first Jewish president.

It's disingenuous to claim Jews are the victims of blame for the economic crisis when all I'm doing is asking why is there a belief that only Jews understand economic policy .. AND, if his entire team was made up of blacks, hispanics, arabs, women, white males, handicapped people, or aliens, many would be asking why .. I suspect even you .. I sure would.

Yet, "blame" comes in to equation when I ask the same question about why it's all jews all the time with Obambi.

There is a reason for this .. and it's one you'll never discover arguing against fact.