Earning Some Hatred

We need to start an e-mail campaign to Obama with that quote.

Kevin, why do you think that the Government and the banks are separate
entities.

Merchant of Venice - Take a pound of flesh and spill no blood. Can you do it?
The FED is a BANK. The Government is the banks Biggest Stockholder.

FannieMae is another Goverment bank which owns 97% of this countries mortgages.

I think you were right on, Kevin. Sound and very impressive.

Kevin,

I'm a long-time admirer of your posts, starting with your time with the Washington Monthly. Clear and consice. Your points were well presented regarding the egregeous financial system we live with. David Corn had great points too. The President, indeed, needs to step up and use the "bully pulpit" to hold the modern-day "plutocats'" feet to the fire. He has the charisma to do it.

I fear, however, our legalized corruption of campaign contributions is part of the problem.

Well done! BTW, best to Domino and Inkspot from another cat-lover!!

Ron

I mean Concise!!

"Obama needs to let us know whose side he's on. "

We got fucked in 2009 as we found out whose side he's on.
We're going to get fucked in 2010 because everyone KNOWS whose side he's on.

You honestly don't know whose side he's on?

Enjoyed listening. Its about time to speak out on what is really happening around us. This feel good attitude our Politicians have portrayed over the years will backfire. Its coming. the more we discuss the more transparent it will become. When you get a taste of the bureaucrats dealing with the public, the more you understand, they are all actors and playing a part. The laws are written to protect these few, we let it happen, now we need to change it. I've dealt with departments that make you sit up and notice of what they do not do for the average citizen. Frightening to say the least. Leaves a bad taste in your mouth to know you really aren't served or protected.
Never understood why people were sold on Wall Street.. take the blinders off

Obama's rhetoric has always been strongly in favor of reform, but even as he was uttering stirring speeches during the campaign he was appointing members of the establishment to his team.

FDR assembled a mixed bag of financial experts and leftists known as the brains trust which was actually committed to reform.

The Congress and Executive have been in league with the banks throughout the Bush administration. It was the democratic leadership that pushed the policy of easing down payments on homes and the financial industry that used this policy to generate huge profits vuia the derivatives they sold around the world.

Today, we have some of the people who were at the center of the bad financial policies trying to fix them: Summers, Bernake, Geithner and their icon, Rubin.
All under a President who is too conciliatory and lacks real leadership in changing and regulating the financial industry that really controls them.

For more than two decades, the executive has mouthed things about a strong dollar, while the Greenback has lost more and more value. In 1978, the Swiss Frank [CHF] could be bought for$0.27. Today it is hovering near par, it is $0.97 for a CHF. - After the UBS scandal, the Swiss decided they would no longer accept funds from persons with a US address, legal or otherwise.
My own desire to safeguard my assets by transferring them out of the slipping dollar to stable currencies such as the CHF are defeated, since the IRS convinced the Swiss to kick out all US address accounts, even long standing, legal ones. What better stable countries and currencies are there?

Until the Supreme Court recognizes that money given by all corporations and lobbyists to the Congress, the major Parties, and even the executive is not speech but pure and simple undue influence, aka bribes, we will have a disfunctional government.
" Government by the people and for the people" will be an empty advertising slogan, until the Congress and the banks are regulated.

First, I believe Kevin, David and Bill Moyers performed a public service by discussing the issues. But Bill Moyers asked the question about "what to do", and that is where things appear bleak.

While the issues all have great import, at the end of the day, everything points back to the impending failure of our form of government. (I use the word impending, since the realization is quite yet ubiquitous).

In the legislature we supposedly have two parties, but one, Currently the Dems are the corrupt politicians. The Republicans are simply right wing radicals voting in lockstep opposition. Lobbyists are the legislators.

The Judiciary is compromised with Right wing corporatist judges who, are in place to ensure the primacy of the lobbyists, should any effective legislation to limit lobbyists via campaign reform or the like be enacted.

The executive branch is largely occupied by forces in alignment with the lobbyists. The whole notion of conciliatory approaches is a smoke screen to maintain the illusion of the government in operation.

Finally the mainstream media is completely along for the ride. Note to Obama: the media will never consider you Bipartisan. Bipartisan = Republican President.

So what happens next? If the masses become largely resigned to the powerlessness, we probably drift towards a total corporate-military feudalism. Otherwise we may drift towards forms or regional power or localized anarchy.

Years ago we were told to work within the system. Today there is no system to work within.

Also, when making comparisons with FDR, we should keep in mind that election campaigns have become more expensive since his time. Via Google: CPI is up about 10-fold since 1936, but the cost of presidential campaigns is up 60-fold. So it's harder to get elected these days if you go against the deep pockets.

Okay, here's another badly-remembered quote in the same vein - said by a supporter of Al Smith at his nominating convention in 1928:

"We love him for the enemies he has made!"

Moyers is an interesting case study in the new organized money controlling America. I read a hit piece on him in the Weekly Standard a couple of years ago pointing out the man has finagled a multimillion dollar annual income from PBS for railing against fat cats and US foreign policy... that's a lot of pledge drives. Mickey Kaus had a piece awhile back pointing out the general counsel of Wisconsin Public Radio made over $300,000 a year. Takes a lot of legal talent to make sure you don't cheat Mozart or Beethoven out of their royalties.

"Your Government is still on the same side of the street with the Good Samaritan and not with those who pass by on the other side."

It is startling to imagine the government on the side of the angels after Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush. We'll see how Obama turns out.

As always Kevin, thoughtful and well-documented analysis on your part.

I love that speech of Roosevelt's but, in defense of Obama, he's in a different political situation than Roosevelt was in October 1936.

By October 1936, the American electorate had lived through 3+ years of the Republican response to the Great Crash of 1929, and then 3+ years of the Democratic response (note: at that time there's still no Social Security Act, no Wagner Act, no SEC---all of that comes in FDR's 3rd term). Voters were on the verge of giving FDR an overwhelming re-election victory, despite the absence of many of the signature accomplishments of the New Deal.

FDR was as much a part of the American establishment as any politician has been. Just as Nixon could go to China because his anti-Communist credentials were so strongly established, so Roosevelt could criticize "organized money" and "welcome their hatred" because he came from the moneyed aristocracy.

A young President, "with a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas", one year into his first term, inheriting the Great Recession which hit only at the end of his predecessor's second term, still struggling to win his signature health-care bill in the face of an opposition that sees it merely as an opportunity to create (as Sen. DeMint said) "Obama's Waterloo", does not have the political maneuvering room to give a speech like Roosevelt's.

(We can, however, envision, hope for, and work for a change in national politics in the next few years that allows Obama to isolate the Republican Party and its allies from power the way that FDR did. He might not say it publicly, but it seems clear from the way he's talked about which presidencies he admires, that Obama wants to change fundamentally the political and economic trajectory of the country. That takes time.)