The rapidity with which Obama has bought into every position promoted by the elite is absolutely spell binding, and makes one wonder if Obama believed a single speech he gave on the campaign trail. Obama lawyers have recently argued that Department of Justice officials that violated the constitution can not be prosecuted because anyone who works for the DOJ has complete immunity. This is the exact position of George W Bush’s lawyers! It also happens to be an illegal opinion and shocked the federal judge that had to listen to it.

In the areas of the economy, Obama’s adherence to the desires of the financial industry make it appear as if he was raised a Rockefeller or Vanderbilt. See this quote from Global Research.

The story is worse than just “Pres. Obama labored, and brought forth a mouse.” He is morphing into Joe Lieberman in reaching across the aisle for Republican support – and no doubt future campaign contributions from the financial sector. There also is a touch of Boris Yeltsin in sponsoring a financial “reform” disturbingly similar to what advisor Larry Summers backed in Russia – relinquishing government power to a banking elite (the notorious “Seven Bankers” in post-Soviet Russia). The Financial Regulatory Reform proposal promotes Wall Street’s “product,” debt creation, at the expense of the economy at large, and lets financial chieftains continue to self-regulate the debt industry – and by the way, to keep all their gains from the past decade’s worth of fraudulent lending, scot-free.

Larry Summers – A One Man Economic Disaster

Larry Summers (along with Jeffery Sacks) was one of the utterly corrupt economists who eviscerated Russia by providing IMF style economic “advice.” — coming up with the brilliant idea of stripping Russia of its assets and selling them to what eventually became the oligarchs. As we know Russia never recovered after advice from American economists and consulting firms, who cleaned up — Goldman Sacks style — now doubt eating at the finest Russian restaurants, while their corrupt advice caused Russians to have to sell their family heirlooms in makeshift markets in order survive. The American economists at the time called this act of desperation the flowering of — “Russian entrepreneurialism.” — no doubt between spoonfuls of Beluga caviar. As an American society we bear a tremendous responsibility for what we did to Russia, yet almost no one even knows about it. Of course its hard to have a conscious when you don’t know history and spend most your time either in front of the TV or at the local mall. Taking responsibility for your society’s actions won’t increase your income or status…so what’s the point really?

Larry Summers and Obama Are Coming After Us Next

Larry Summers has one of worst track records of any living economist of comparable prominence, and Obama makes him the head of his Council of Economic Advisors. However, that is just one of his many jobs. He works for a hedge fund peddling influence for $5 million per year, plus god knows what other directorships and think tank boards he sits on. Because of the massive piles of money the financial industry literally throws at him, he can only represent their interests. Their objectives are simple…concentrate economic power and financialize the economy. Unless the non-elite get with it, they will suck as much out of the economy as possible….just as they did with Russia.

Conclusion

It pains us to say this, but Obama has scammed everyone who hoped he would be different. He never clearly never believed anything he was saying, and is a more suave version of George Bush — or at least 90% of him. Its clear now that no US president is running anything, but is a paid actor for an increasingly out of touch elite that pulls their string. Obama’s statements are pure rhetoric, the best thing to do when Obama begins a speech is to change the channel. If you want to be lied to, why not watch an infomercial? Now begins the long process of opposing him. It would be nice to know what democracy actually tastes like in our lifetimes. It is difficult to see why we needed to have an election to get more of the same policies — but with a prettier wrapper.

Professor Friedman felt both that corporations had no business spending money for social good, and that business should not be regulated, because all regulation would eventually be captured by business interests. What type of world would this result in we wonder?

Of the posts on this blog, those related to Milton Friedman seem to be some of  the most popular. People seem surprised that Milton Friedman is so heavily criticized in this blog and in others. While Friedman has an aura of respectability which has been granted by concentrated power, the fact is that Friedman is easy to criticize because his track record is so weak. No doubt we all know a person who is good at their job, but tends to have a number of doctrinal or essentially retarded political views. This was Friedman in a nutshell. Economics is presented as a topic that has a great deal of applicability to everyday life. However, academic economics, which is the area where Friedman achieved fame, is so esoteric and deliberately obstuse that it is nowhere near as applicable as many people think. Furthermore, the emphasis of economics over the past century has been to move further and further way from the real economy and focusing on advanced forecasting (which while containing a great deal of math can’t seem to predict the most apparent asset bubbles). Thus, while Friedman’s academic work may or may not have been good (for non-academics it makes no difference as Friedman was not publishing reseach for any applicability, but simply to impress other academics or wealthy benefactors), it does not have much to do with his political opinions. While Friedman used his Nobel Prize reputation to back his political opinions, they were in fact nothing more than that.

Selling Opinions

A second problem with the profession of economics is that most economists outside of academics work for large concentrated financial interests. This actually relates to the reason why economists can’t seem to predict anything. Economists are paid to provide forecasts their bosses want, not forecasts that are “negative.” Furthermore, many economists simply can not speak out about the present boondoggle-bailout because they work for the institutions receiving the money. Paul Krugman can afford to criticize idiotic banking and bailout policy because he has made his name already, however, if he was silent, he could make even more money because he would be lavished with hedge fund speaking opportunities (like economics super-whore Larry Summers) and so on. In terms of selling his opinions for cash, Friedman was peerless.

In this post we wanted to list our posts that discuss Friedman.

This post discusses how Friedman appeared to configure his opinion in order to get on the gravy train from wealthy corporations. He said what they liked, and they promoted him.

http://counterecon.com/2008/01/10/milton-friedman-economistintellectual-prostitute/

This post describes Friedman’s greatest defect…he was simply unethical. He was primarily about accruing power, therefore, how he accomplished this goal was secondary. The immorality in his own life went a long way to explain why he could not see a place for morality or standards in society in general. Friedman was famous for supporting any regime internationally, no matter how terrible, as long as they implemented his “shock therapy.”

http://counterecon.com/2008/12/24/friedman-and-rumsfeld-and-cheney-corrupt-brothers-in-arms/

This post describes how economics writing is filled with politics and that much of it has nothing to do with economics.

http://counterecon.com/2008/01/11/politics-in-economics-writing/

Shock doctrine

Naomi Klein’s book – the Shock Doctrine is an excellent primer on Milton Friedman.

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine

100% Wrong?

One thing we have recently begun to do is to try to find instances where Friedman was right about something. He has what must be the most miserable track record of popular economists, or at least he is tied with Larry Summers for being consistently wrong. However, we did find a documented instance where Friedman was correct about something, and it is related to real estate taxation. You can find out where he was right here.

http://counterecon.com/2009/05/04/michael-hudson-on-real-estate-taxation/

There was a huge focus on change during the Obama presidential campaign. However, after being elected, Obama had the opportunity, or at least the perceived opportunity to bring in fresh blood into the senior posts. However, Obama decided to select the same people from previous administrations. This was extremely concerning, particularly for the cabinet positions related to the economy. This is of course because of the deep economic crisis that occurred before Obama took office and was a major contributor to him being able to become elected.

Obama’s Appointments

Obama’s appointments have been the “usual suspects,” and have demonstrated no unique or critical thinking on his part. He seems to have selected people from an extraordinarily narrow group of names. These names seem to have been provided to him by the banking industry. This includes Timothy Geithner (replacing another industry person Hank Paulson who had already provided immense bail-outs to his friends at the major investment banks), and Laurence Summers. Timothy Geithner has done nothing but give more money to banks, with no strings attached, and what Laurence Summers has provided is less clear, however, what is clear is that both these men are totally subordinated to the banking industry. Laurence Summers was instrumental in supporting the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which lifted the six decade restrictions between commercial banking, insurance, and investment services. His statement..

“Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and will replace them with a system for the 21st century. This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy”

It turns out that this legislation was critical in removing the old safeguards and was instrumental in allowing the behaviors that caused the current crisis. Other areas that Laurence Summers bet wrong on include opposing regulation and standards on credit default swaps. This allows companies like AIG to provide insurance on bad mortgage backed securities without having to set any money aside to pay out. AIG, with a book value of $50 billion, now owes $300 billion due to the collapse of the mortgage backed security market. This difference will be picked up by Laurence Summers.

While Laurence Summers was president of Harvard and has quite a reputation as an economist, it is clear that he has cost US taxpayers billions and is wrong on almost every major policy decision he supports. We suspect this is not because Laurence Summers is a stupid man (he was the youngest tenured professor in Harvard’s history), but because he is utterly corrupt. Laurence Summers received millions from hedge funds and well paid speaking engagements at many of the major investment banks.

After seeing this track record, Obama selected him as Director of the National Economic Council. This is how much Obama seems to value track record vs. pedigree. Of course this depends upon how you look at his track record. His track record of being correct is awful, but his track record of supporting policies that are corrupt and enrich elite interests is second to none. This brings up the question…

Does Obama believe or know that he has to appoint a specific number of people from a batch of individuals that are provided to him by corporate representatives. Does his Chief of Staff (Rohm Emanual) have this list compiled for him by corporate doners? Are they first cleared with large corporate interests before they are presented to Obama to he can choose from a preselected group? Has this always been the way political appointments have been done, at least for the very top political appointments. Does Obama realize or at least intuitively know what would happen to him if he were to appoint people from outside of this pre-selected group?

A Democracy Allows Corporations to Control The Appointment Process?

One can question the degree of democracy in a country that both controls the electoral process to the degree that it does, has Madison Avenue produce the political commercials, engages in voter purging, adjusts the votes through computerized machines and after all of this has one final trick up its sleeve:  it then decides for those who are elected who will be appointed to the key positions in the any new administration.

Kennedy was not getting along very well with the Pentagon and Federal Reserve Bank and was not buying into key concepts like “the Domino Theory,” Cuba as a threat to US national security and the Federal Reserve as a private banking entity with government money creation abilities. LBJ proved a compliant president which the Pentagon and Federal Reserve Bank was much more happy with. Obama has to be careful and institute policies that support elite interests, or else…..well lets just say the elite have their methods of limiting someone like Obama. If it were to actually happen, it will be a lone gunman. (its must always always be a lone gunman, or the individual does it to themselves. For instance, the Waco victims were not killed by the FBI, they shot themselves, some of them managed to shoot themselves 9 times.) If anyone ever disagrees with the official story they will be labeled conspiracy nuts. However, given Obama’s complicity with the elite, putting their people in key positions and taking tax-payer money and giving it to Goldman Sacks and so on, he should avoid JFK’s fate.

US History of Political Assassination

The fact is the US conservative power structures (i.e. FBI, Pentagon) kills people that get in the way of the objectives of concentrated power. The following list of people have a number of similarities. First, each of them were opposed to the Vietnam War, each of them had an extensive FBI file on them as well as substantial FBI intimidation (except JFK), and all of them were killed by bullets.

• JFK
• Robert Kennedy
• Martin Luther King
• Malcom X
• John Lennon
• Fred Hampton

The conventional wisdom is that each of these people were killed by lone gunmen (except for Fred Hampton, who was killed in police raid by the Chicago Police Department, after being told, falsely by the way, by the FBI that Mr. Hampton was responsible for the killing of police officers). However, how likely is it that the most influential anti-Vietnam individuals were all killed by lone gunmen? Mathematically, and considering that no pro-Pentagon people were killed, not very likely at all. Simple probability theory would indicate that these people were assassinated by criminal conspiracies by those who were in the power to do so and who found their politics objectionable. Its really not that complicated, once you see the pattern. The government does not have to answer these questions because anyone questioning the official story is marginalized as a conspiracy nut.

The Conspiracy Nut and the Perfectly Rational Institution

The very existence of the concept of a conspiracy nut is in a way a license to kill. However, labeling people as “nuts” is not a new strategy. Interestingly, institutions are never described as nuts. For instance, the Pentagon and defense contractors were at one point performing nuclear testing in the atmosphere, distributing nuclear debris far and wide, but strangely the Pentagon is never described as nut. When some American scientists opposed this, the Pentagon had their passports taken and they were extensively monitored by the FBI. Only individuals are nuts, institutions are perfectly rational.

The Nut Behind the Wheel

When the automobile industry was opposing the introduction of safety belts into cars the industry (specifically GM, Ford and Chrysler, all the same companies now asking for a bail-out) came up with the concept of “the nut behind the wheel.” This was an idea that all traffic fatalities had nothing to do with car design or their safety features, but where simple a feature of “nuts” who were not driving safely. This worked for quite some time, but eventually, the industry lost the fight and began to put safety equipment in their cars. This drastically reduced the fatalities and injuries from vehicles, disproving the nut behind the wheel concept. Institutions will always propose that they are perfectly rational, and that those who oppose them or criticize them are “nuts” or “hippies,” etc… These is nothing new about this strategy, but what is interesting is that it works.

No Prosecution of the Financial Criminal Class?

What is most amazing is that there have been no prosecutions of the people responsible for this crisis. Bernie Madoff perpetuated a large ponzi scheme, however, he is not responsible for the crisis. The culprits are the major financial institutions such as Citibank, Bank of America, Country Wide, Lehman Bros, Goldman Sacks, AIG, etc…along with people like Laurence Summers and Phil Graham that supported legislation that removed necessary financial regulation. The major players a not being prosecuted, but rather are being bailed out. The number of responsible parties reaches far and wide, from the corrupt mortgage broker to President Bush who appointed people with no interest in enforcing financial and accounting laws. None of these people is headed to jail, though this scandal is far greater than the previous accounting scandals that did result in a few criminal prosecutions. Is there some reason Obama is not pushing for investigations of people in this area? Has he concluded that these people helped elect him and will be necessary to help raise money for both his re-election and the reelection of his Democratic majority in congress? Did the Secret Service show him the video of JFK when he came into office and then leave a note on his desk stating “mistakes can happen for those that don’t go along?” Its hard to know, but it is quite suspicious.

Reference

“The Order was for the Treasury to issue silver certificates against all silver held by the government which did not already have certificates against it. The Order was needed due to the passage of Public Law 88-36 which repealed the Silver Purchase Act and other related monetary measures. One result was that after the repeals, only the President could issue new silver certificates.

The Federal Reserve System could replace the certificates, but only in larger denominations. The thrust of the Order returned the authority to issue new silver certificates (and specify denominations) back to the U.S. Treasury.

This executive order allowed for the Federal Reserve System to distribute and exchange currency at lower denominations that met the growing economic need. The authoritative basis for the Order was substantially nullified in 1982 with the passage of Public Law 97-258.

The Order was never directly reversed. However, Section 1(j) of Executive Order 10289, which was added by Section 1(a) of Executive Order 11110, was revoked when Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12608 in 1987.[1]” – Wikipedia

In terms of how to begin thinking like this, we offer a quote from Ralph Nader:

“Ralph Nader: One day in the spring, at Princeton, where I went to college, I noticed there were dead birds on the pavement between the campus buildings, where very large trees were. At first I didn’t think much of it, I just said, there’s a blue bird or a robin. They weren’t mutilated in any way, they just were on their back, dead. And, a few days later I saw more such birds, early in the morning before the grounds keepers picked them up. I noticed that during the day, we’d be going from one classroom to another, and the ground keepers would be spraying with huge hoses these trees. It turns out it was DDT. At the time, in the early ’50s, no one thought DDT was dangerous to anybody but insects. Well, it turned out it was dangerous right there to birds. I went down to the Daily Princetonian, the college paper, and tried to persuade them to do a story. I had one of the birds with me to show them, and they said, “Naw, there’s nothing wrong. We have some of the best science professors in the world,” they told me. “Chemistry, Biology, if they had any idea it was harmful, it would be stopped.” Well it continued on for years, into the 60s and even later. And the students would wipe some of it off their face, it would be so thick at times. But that taught me a very important lesson. One, that newspaper people can get very jaded. The editor was a senior, he had his feet on the desk, leaning back in his swivel chair, which is always a sign that curiosity might have dimmed. Second, that you might know something, like an expert chemistry professor, but if you are not interested in a problem, or if you have a dual allegiance like perhaps you might be a consultant to one of the chemical companies that produces the pesticide, you are not going to apply what you know. You are going to be in your little, pigeon-holed specialization, and become one of the world’s experts on some tiny little item. But when it comes to applying it to a problem right where you live and work, you are not necessarily the best person to start the ball rolling. It could be someone who doesn’t have a Ph.D., someone who has a sense of curiosity, and begins to ask questions. That’s why I always say there’s no ticket of admission for active citizenship. Anybody can get through that gate, and anybody can ask that basic question that gets the ball rolling. “