Friday, December 3, 2010

Who Really Benefits From Obama's Staggering Duplicity, Corruption, and On Going Performances?

OBAMA, THE LIMP! HE PRETENDS HE DOESN’T WANT TO EXTEND THE BUSH TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY, ONE OF THE GREATEST COMPONENTS OF THIS NATION’S ECONOMY MELTDOWN, THEN HE GOES IN THE BACK ROOM TO PUSH HIS LA RAZA AGENDA FOR AMNESTY!
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FROM THE ARTICLE BELOW – Get on WSWS.org free NO-ADS E-NEWS!

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“What is coming is a windfall for the wealthy whose estimated value is $700 billion over 10 years, or $70 billion a year if the extension is for a shorter period of time.”
“Both parties represent that social layer in America that will benefit most from the tax cuts—the super-rich and the most privileged layers of the upper middle class—but the Democrats are compelled to hide their position behind a pretense of concern for working people and the unemployed.”
“More is involved here than the aggressiveness of the Republicans and the cowardice of the Democrats. The actual policy differences between the two parties are minimal. Both parties represent that social layer in America that will benefit most from the tax cuts—the super-rich and the most privileged layers of the upper middle class—but the Democrats are compelled to hide their position behind a pretense of concern for working people and the unemployed.”
“After weeks of avoiding the subject, leading up to the expiration of benefits Tuesday for some 800,000 workers, both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi staged cynical publicity stunts on Thursday morning to advertise their supposed concern for the unemployed.”

Obama, Congress negotiate tax cuts for the wealthy
By Patrick Martin
3 December 2010
The Obama administration has begun closed-door talks with congressional leaders of both parties on the extension of the Bush tax cuts, amid reports that a deal will likely be based on acceptance of the central Republican demand that tax cuts for the wealthy be continued without any income ceiling, either the $250,000 a year proposed by Obama or the $1 million suggested last month by Senate Democrats.
The Wall Street Journal described the talks as “the first step toward a deal this month that many strategists in both parties believe will temporarily extend current tax rates for all income levels.” The New York Times reported that “lawmakers said they could begin to see the contours of a potential outcome that would extend the Bush-era tax rates temporarily while giving Democrats some concessions on unemployment compensation….”
What is coming is a windfall for the wealthy whose estimated value is $700 billion over 10 years, or $70 billion a year if the extension is for a shorter period of time. This handout to the financial aristocracy may be packaged with a revival of extended unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, which the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership allowed to expire on November 30.
The social necessity for extended benefits was underscored by the release of Labor Department figures on new claims for unemployment benefits, which jumped 26,000 last week to a total of 456,000. New jobless claims have been averaging 450,000 a week throughout 2010, well above the level of 400,000 that US economists cite as indicating a stable, rather than contracting, labor market.
After weeks of avoiding the subject, leading up to the expiration of benefits Tuesday for some 800,000 workers, both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi staged cynical publicity stunts on Thursday morning to advertise their supposed concern for the unemployed.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report warning that if Congress does not act to restore the extended benefits, a total of 2 million workers will lose coverage by the end of December and a total of 7 million workers will be cut off by November 2011. The result will be a further slowdown in the US economy and the loss of another 800,000 jobs.
In the House of Representatives, the outgoing Democratic majority leadership forced a vote Thursday afternoon on a bill that would extend the Bush tax cuts for the 98 percent of families with incomes below the $250,000 mark. The bill narrowly survived a procedural vote in the morning, passing 213 to 203, with nearly 30 conservative Democrats voting against it. The bill itself was adopted later in the day by a larger margin, 234 to 188.
Pelosi tied the tax cut vote to the expiration of unemployment benefits, lambasting the Republicans for supporting $700 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy based on further federal borrowing, while adopting the opposite standard for the extended unemployment benefits. “When it comes to the unemployment insurance, and just the renewal we want to have would cost $18 billion,” she said, “they’re saying that has to be paid for. We have to pay for unemployment insurance, we don’t have to pay for tax cuts for the rich.”
Pelosi’s deputy, outgoing Majority Whip Steny Hoyer, chimed in: “I believe that passing unemployment insurance is a moral imperative, not a political deal.”
Neither Pelosi nor Hoyer bothered to explain why, given the top-heavy Democratic majority in the outgoing House, they were unable to pass a bill to continue extended unemployment benefits before the November 30 cutoff. The truth is that the Democrats deliberately allowed the program to expire so that its possible revival could be used to disguise their collusion with the Republicans on extending tax cuts for the wealthy.
The closed-door talks on the tax cut renewal were the only concrete decision taken at the much-publicized White House summit meeting Tuesday between Obama and his top aides and leading congressional Republicans and Democrats. The talks began the next day and continued into Thursday, with White House spokesmen saying they were making progress.
TIM GEITHNER, BUSH AND OBAMA’S ARCHITECT FOR BANKSTER BAILOUTS, NO-STRINGS WELFARE, AND NO REAL REGULATION!!!!
In naming Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Budget Director Jacob Lew to represent the administration in the talks—two figures identified, respectively, with the bailout of Wall Street and fiscal austerity—Obama sent a clear message of the kind of deal he was looking for.
Senate Democrats followed suit, naming Max Baucus, chairman of the finance committee and co-architect of the 2001 Bush tax cuts, as their representative. Congressman Chris Van Hollen, a key aide to Pelosi, represented House Democrats, while the Republicans were represented by Senator Jon Kyl, the minority whip, and Congressman Dave Camp, who will head the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee in the incoming Congress.
The talks began with a blatant display of bad faith by the Republicans, as all 42 Republican senators signed a joint letter declaring they would block any legislation during the lame-duck session of Congress until the Senate took up bills to extend all the Bush tax cuts and fund government operations through the rest of the fiscal year.
The letter is remarkable both for its arrogance—42 out of 100 senators is a distinct minority, and could not dictate the agenda in an authentic democracy—and for its timing. It was made public shortly after the bipartisan summit at the White House, which ended with the usual rhetorical boilerplate about cooperation and civility.

THERE’S ONE THING OBAMA IS GOOD AT! CAPITULATION TO WALL ST. AND ALL WALL ST. INTERESTS! SINCE HE’S BEEN IN OFFICE HE HAS NOT ONCE STOOD UP FOR ANYTHING THAT DID NOT BENEFIT HIS BANKSTER DONORS OR ILLEGALS!!!

Senate Democrats complained that the Republican declaration amounted to an ultimatum, but the Obama administration immediately capitulated. The White House did not condemn the Republican maneuver and went ahead with the scheduled bipartisan talks. One top Democratic aide told Politico.com, “There is growing concern among congressional Democrats that the White House will cave early and without a fight on tax cuts for the middle class and job-creating proposals, and not get much in return.”
Republicans gloated, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell dismissing the House vote on limiting the tax cut, saying, “It’s not going anywhere.” The bipartisan talks would agree on an across-the-board extension of the tax cuts, including the wealthy, he said. The only issue was “just how long that extension will be.” One of the most right-wing Republicans in the Senate, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, said he believed that Obama “has come around to the idea that taxes can’t be raised in a recession.”
POWER SHIFTED? DON’T YOU LOVE THE LITTLE PERFORMANCE OF OBAMA, AND HIS HAREM OF CORRUPTION, AS HE DANCES TO THE TUNES OF HIS WALL ST. PAYMASTERS?
The Los Angeles Times observed: “The Republican ultimatum also showed the extent to which power in Washington has shifted in the aftermath of the GOP rout in last month’s midterm elections. Even though newly elected Republicans do not take office until January, the GOP on Wednesday was confident in issuing its demands and united in its vow to employ a filibuster in the Senate to back them up. Meanwhile, Obama appeared unable to move them off their position or exact any sort of political price.”
EVEN AS THE DEMS WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE THEY DON’T WANT TO EXTEND BUSH’S TAX BENEFITS FOR THE RICH, THEY’RE WORKING ON YET ANOTHER AMNESTY DEVICE TO PUT EVEN MORE ILLEGALS IN OUR JOBS, WELFARE, OR REDUCED FEES FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. THE DUPLICITY OF THIS WHITE HOUSE AND CONGRESS IS STAGGERING!

More is involved here than the aggressiveness of the Republicans and the cowardice of the Democrats. The actual policy differences between the two parties are minimal. Both parties represent that social layer in America that will benefit most from the tax cuts—the super-rich and the most privileged layers of the upper middle class—but the Democrats are compelled to hide their position behind a pretense of concern for working people and the unemployed.
This pretended sympathy is essential for the Democratic Party to play its designated role for the American ruling class as a bulwark against any challenge to its class domination from below. This pretense is wearing thin, however, and will be further undermined by what the New York Times described, in a considerable understatement, as “the prospect of White House and Congressional Democrats conceding on extending the tax cuts for affluent Americans.”

ONE MONTH AGO, OBAMA AND HIS LA RAZA DEMS, PELOSI, REID, FEINSTEIN, AND BOXER WERE PUSHING FOR SOCIAL SECURITY FOR ILLEGALS, EVEN AS THEY WERE CUTTING IT FOR LEGALS AND GOING OUT TO BORROW THAT!

The social position of the Democrats is most clearly expressed in their response to the proposals from the bipartisan commission appointed by Obama to make recommendations on cutting the federal budget deficit. The final vote of the 18-member panel is set for Friday, but five of the six members selected by Obama have endorsed the report of the two chairmen, Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, which calls for sweeping cuts in entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, as well as tax increases for middle-income working people.
Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, the lone Senate liberal on the panel, commented favorably on the panel report, although he may vote against it. He declared one of the most onerous of the cuts proposed by the chairmen, an increase in the age of eligibility for Social Security to 69 by 2075, to be “acceptable to me.” Raising the retirement age was “not radical,” he said. “These things are sensible and we’ve got to accept sensible alternatives to move forward, on the left and on the right.”
Another Senate Democrat on the commission, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, enthusiastically endorsed the chairmen’s report. He cited the danger of a mushrooming federal deficit under conditions of a global financial crisis. “Anyone watching the spreading debt crisis in Europe over the last few days, in Ireland, Portugal and Spain, understands the threat we face is real,” he said. “We can’t afford to wait until the crisis is upon us.”
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April 1, 2009
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism
By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ
THE Obama administration’s $500 billion or more proposal to deal with America’s ailing banks has been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose.
Treasury hopes to get us out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency.
Let’s take a moment to remember what caused this mess in the first place. Banks got themselves, and our economy, into trouble by overleveraging — that is, using relatively little capital of their own, they borrowed heavily to buy extremely risky real estate assets. In the process, they used overly complex instruments like collateralized debt obligations.
In theory, the administration’s plan is based on letting the market determine the prices of the banks’ “toxic assets” — including outstanding house loans and securities based on those loans. The reality, though, is that the market will not be pricing the toxic assets themselves, but options on those assets.
The two have little to do with each other. The government plan in effect involves insuring almost all losses. Since the private investors are spared most losses, then they primarily “value” their potential gains. This is exactly the same as being given an option.
Consider an asset that has a 50-50 chance of being worth either zero or $200 in a year’s time. The average “value” of the asset is $100. Ignoring interest, this is what the asset would sell for in a competitive market. It is what the asset is “worth.” Under the plan by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the government would provide about 92 percent of the money to buy the asset but would stand to receive only 50 percent of any gains, and would absorb almost all of the losses. Some partnership!
Assume that one of the public-private partnerships the Treasury has promised to create is willing to pay $150 for the asset. That’s 50 percent more than its true value, and the bank is more than happy to sell. So the private partner puts up $12, and the government supplies the rest — $12 in “equity” plus $126 in the form of a guaranteed loan.
If, in a year’s time, it turns out that the true value of the asset is zero, the private partner loses the $12, and the government loses $138. If the true value is $200, the government and the private partner split the $74 that’s left over after paying back the $126 loan. In that rosy scenario, the private partner more than triples his $12 investment. But the taxpayer, having risked $138, gains a mere $37.
Even in an imperfect market, one shouldn’t confuse the value of an asset with the value of the upside option on that asset.
But Americans are likely to lose even more than these calculations suggest, because of an effect called adverse selection. The banks get to choose the loans and securities that they want to sell. They will want to sell the worst assets, and especially the assets that they think the market overestimates (and thus is willing to pay too much for).
What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess.
So what is the appeal of a proposal like this? Perhaps it’s the kind of Rube Goldberg device that Wall Street loves — clever, complex and nontransparent, allowing huge transfers of wealth to the financial markets. It has allowed the administration to avoid going back to Congress to ask for the money needed to fix our banks, and it provided a way to avoid nationalization.
But we are already suffering from a crisis of confidence. When the high costs of the administration’s plan become apparent, confidence will be eroded further. At that point the task of recreating a vibrant financial sector, and resuscitating the economy, will be even harder.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1995 to 1997, was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 2001.
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GET THIS BOOK!

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Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses

BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY


Editorial Reviews
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
Congressman Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative needs to read Obamanomics.” And Johan Goldberg, columnist and bestselling author says, “Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best and an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”
If you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
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Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers.
Investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:
* The Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell corporate profits and more government control
* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda
* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)
* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists
* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics
If you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create make-work government jobs, this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
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Praise for Obamanomics
“The notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs, taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author
“‘Every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this astute observation, Tim Carney begins his task of laying bare the Obama administration’s corporatist governing strategy, hidden behind the president’s populist veneer. This meticulously researched book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Washington really works.”
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama
“Every libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that large corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs to read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”
—Congressman Ron Paul
“It’s understandable for critics to condemn President Obama for his ‘socialism.’ But as Tim Carney shows, the real situation is at once more subtle and more sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately punishing everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to notice, as usual, which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to American History
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• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596986123
• ISBN-13: 978-1596986121

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