The Wall Street bailout looks worse and worse

I was against the Wall Street bailout from the beginning, but hoped to be wrong about what it would achieve.

Unfortunately, it’s turned out like I expected–a huge taxpayer giveaway that has does nothing to get credit flowing or stabilize the banking sector.

Read this piece by bobswern and explain to me why President Obama is letting Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and economic adviser Larry Summers steer him in this disastrous direction. Obama is too smart not to be able to figure out what’s wrong with continuing the expensive, accountability-free Bush policy.

More links to commentaries on the corporate bailouts are in this diary by Jerome Armstrong.

Mark my words: later this year, Washington pundits and so-called “centrist Democrats” who claimed we had to “do something” to save the banking sector will warn us that we can’t afford universal health care reform.

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desmoinesdem

  • Why?

    Because Geithner is a tool for Wall Street and Obama doesn’t have the power to do what needs to be done.  It’s as simple as having de jure power but not de facto.  It sucks, but Obama just can’t do it without disowning Wall Street and he’s not going to do that, so we’re stuck in this spiral of government predation on the wealth of taxpayers because that’s what the de facto powerbrokers want.  Believe it or not, our government has been in decline for some time relative to private economic powers, and because of this decline, the government now can’t act with sovereignty when it needs to act.  It’s not Obama’s fault, it’s the combination of state power decline, deregulation, and Wall Street infusion of key players in key government roles.  The jig is up, taxpayers are getting burned, and the public is distracted by bonuses, when they should be focused on how they’re REALLY getting burned.  This is all troubling, but as they say, sh*t happens to the best of us, and the rest make out like bandits!

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