Obama's economic “vision”
On the contrary, Obama, as
usual, talked out of both sides of his mouth. He took pains to reassure his
real constituency—Wall Street and the corporate-financial elite—that his
quasi-populist posturing meant nothing and he remained committed to the policy
of austerity and attacks on working class living standards that he had pursued
throughout his first term in office—a policy that is in all essentials
identical to that of his opponent.
Obama boasted of signing a
law to cut the deficit by $2 trillion and “reduce our yearly domestic spending
to its lowest level as a share of the economy in nearly 60 years.” What was
America like 60 years ago? No Medicare, no Medicaid, no food stamps, no federal
aid to education, no interstate highway system.
Obama's economic “vision”
By Andre Damon and Barry Grey
21 June 2012
21 June 2012
A
week ago, President Obama gave a speech, billed as a major statement on
economic policy, that was remarkable only for the brazenness of its cynicism
and dishonesty.
Attempting
to cast the November election as a contest between diametrically opposed
economic and social programs, Obama declared: “But more than anything else,
this election presents a choice between two fundamentally different visions of
how to create strong, sustained growth; how to pay down our long-term debt; and
most of all, how to generate good, middle-class jobs so people can have
confidence if they work hard, they can get ahead.”
Obama
called the choice between the two perspectives “the defining issue of our
time,” and added, “What’s holding us back is a stalemate in Washington between
two fundamentally different views of which direction America should take. And
this election is your chance to break that stalemate.”
Obama
claimed that his “vision” was driven by concern for the “middle class,” while
that of his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, was geared to the wealthy. The
lengthy speech, given in Cleveland, one of many Midwestern cities devastated by
long-term industrial decline compounded by more than three years of mass
unemployment, included acknowledgments of the vast growth of social inequality
and allusions to wholesale fraud committed by banks and corporations.
“Over
the past few decades,” Obama said, “the income of the top 1 percent grew by
more than 275 percent—to an average of $1.3 million a year. Big financial
institutions, corporations saw their profits soar. But prosperity never
trickled down to the middle class.”
He
continued: “Without strong enough regulations, families were enticed, and
sometimes tricked, into buying homes they couldn’t afford. Banks and investors
were allowed to package and sell risky mortgages. Huge, reckless bets were made
with other people’s money on the line. And too many from Wall Street to
Washington simply looked the other way.”
After
the financial “house of cards” (Obama’s words) collapsed in 2008, American
families’ wealth “declined at a rate nearly seven times faster than when the
market crashed in 1929. Millions of homes were foreclosed. Our deficit soared.
And nine million of our citizens lost their jobs… hardworking Americans who had
met their responsibilities, but were forced to pay for the irresponsibility of
others.”
This
description amounts to an indictment of the political and economic
system—greed, criminality and official corruption working together to plunder
the people and multiply the profits and fortunes of the corporations and the
rich.
Obama,
of course, drew no such conclusions from his own words. Nor did he offer any
proposals to address the social catastrophe he had described. Somehow, his
“vision”—supposedly vastly different from that of the Republicans—failed to
include any measures to create jobs, provide relief for the victims of the
crisis, or hold the criminals responsible for the disaster accountable.
On the contrary, Obama, as
usual, talked out of both sides of his mouth. He took pains to reassure his
real constituency—Wall Street and the corporate-financial elite—that his
quasi-populist posturing meant nothing and he remained committed to the policy
of austerity and attacks on working class living standards that he had pursued
throughout his first term in office—a policy that is in all essentials
identical to that of his opponent.
Thus,
he declared that programs “we can’t afford” had to be cut. His vision, he
stressed, “despite what you hear from my opponent,” had “never been a vision
about how government creates jobs”—meaning no government jobs or public works
programs. The vision did, however, include “a federal government that is leaner
and more efficient,” i.e., thousands of federal worker layoffs and cuts in pay
and benefits.
Obama boasted of signing a
law to cut the deficit by $2 trillion and “reduce our yearly domestic spending
to its lowest level as a share of the economy in nearly 60 years.” What was
America like 60 years ago? No Medicare, no Medicaid, no food stamps, no federal
aid to education, no interstate highway system.
Obama’s
vision turns out to be a nightmare scenario of social retrogression that
amounts to a social counterrevolution.
The
staggering level of cynicism and deceit reflected in the speech is in part a
response to the problems besetting Obama’s reelection campaign. The earlier
attempt to base the campaign on the pretense of an accelerating economic
recovery has been shattered by several months of dismal employment reports showing
that US job-creation is grinding to a halt.
Obama
made an attempt at damage control at a press conference on the economy two
weeks ago, but he could not help exuding indifference to the plight of the
working class. He let slip his real views when he proclaimed the private sector
to be “doing fine” and doing a “good job creating jobs,” and boasted of “record
corporate profits.”
Having
concluded that the economy will, if anything, be in worse shape in November
than it is today, the Obama campaign decided it needed a new narrative. Hence
the Cleveland speech and its absurd mantra of contrasting economic visions.
Rhetoric
flagrantly at odds with reality is, of course, nothing new for the Obama
administration or American politics in general. Obama, in particular, seems
always to proceed from the assumption that the American people are infinitely
gullible and suffer from collective amnesia. He relies as well on his
well-placed confidence in the liberals and assorted “left” organizations around
the Democratic Party to go along with the fraud.
However,
the scale and pervasiveness of lying in the current election campaign,
remarkable even by the degraded standards of American politics, cannot simply
be attributed to the subjective, personal characteristics of individual
politicians. It is more fundamentally an expression of the vast and
unbridgeable chasm that has opened up between the entire political system and
the overwhelming majority of the American people. Under conditions of the
deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the capitalist two-party
system is impervious to the needs and desires of the people and incapable of
offering any policies to address their economic distress.
The
completely sclerotic and corrupt character of the political system, staffed
from top to bottom by bribed toadies of the corporate-financial aristocracy,
reflects vast changes in the social and economic structure of the United States
that have taken place since the last great breakdown of American and world
capitalism in 1929.
In
the Depression of the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a representative of the
American ruling class and unswerving defender of capitalism, presented himself
as the protector of the common man and launched verbal attacks on the “economic
royalists” of Wall Street far sharper than anything Obama would dare to utter.
But Roosevelt was able to back up his rhetoric with significant social reforms,
such as Social Security, unemployment insurance, public works programs and the
Tennessee Valley Authority. While these were carefully designed not to threaten
the basic interests of the capitalist class, they did improve the lot of
millions of people.
Today,
no such reforms are on offer, fundamentally because of the vast economic
decline of American capitalism in the intervening decades. From the industrial
workshop of the world and the rising global economic power, the United States
has deteriorated to the status of the world’s biggest debtor, with a shrunken
industrial base and an economy based largely on financial speculation and
parasitism. The most important social expression of this decline has been a
colossal growth of social inequality, making the US the most unequal
industrialized country in the world.
The
decay of America’s industrial base and its increasing turn to financial
speculation and manipulation have also produced critical changes in the ruling
class itself, leading to the supremacy of a financial elite which derives its
vast and ever growing wealth not from the production of useful goods, but from quasi-criminal
speculative activities that are divorced from and detrimental to real
production.
All
that is left to the ruling class of today is lies, propaganda and the
preparations for state repression and dictatorship in response to the
inevitable eruption of class struggle on a mass scale. And, it must be added,
the indispensable political services of liberal and pseudo-left
organizations—such as the Nation magazine and the International
Socialist Organization—that reflect the interests not of the working class, but
of affluent layers of the middle class. They devote their efforts to channeling
popular opposition behind the Democratic Party and its allies, such as the
trade unions, and blocking the emergence of an independent political and
socialist movement of the working class.
Thus,
the current issue of the Nation features an article entitled “A Politics
for the 99 Percent” that predictably and stupidly parrots the absurd
pretensions of Obama’s Cleveland speech. “Obama has indicted the right’s extremes,”
the authors write, “arguing eloquently for public initiatives to save the
middle class and revive the American dream.”
*
UNDER
OBAMA, HIS DOJ IS BUSY ARMING THE MEX DRUG CARTELS, FIGHTING STATES TO PUT
ILLEGALS IN VOTING BOOTHS, SABOTAGING E-VERIFY TO PUT ILLEGALS IN OUR JOBS, AND
SUING AMERICAN STATES ON BEHALF OF HIS PARTY BASE of ILLEGALS.
HOLDER
HAS NO TIME TO PURSUE ANY, NOT EVEN ONE OF OBAMA’S CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS!
PROFITS
ARE SOARING FOR BANKSTERS, AND SO ARE FORECLOSURES.
HERE’S
OBAMA’S STATE:
Illinois foreclosures skyrocket
By Marcus Day
21 June 2012
A report published last Thursday by foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac revealed that foreclosure activity in the state of Illinois jumped 29 percent between April and May and was up 54 percent from a year ago.
Lenders issued 16,318 foreclosure filings to Illinois properties last month. Filings include default notices, auction sale notices, and bank repossessions. The state had at least 113,680 homes in foreclosure, nearly 10 percent of the national total.
According to the report, Illinois had the fifth highest foreclosure rate in the country, with 1 in every 325 housing units seeing some sort of foreclosure activity. The state’s foreclosure rate was only slightly less than that in California, which had 1 in 324 housing units seeing foreclosure activity. Georgia shot up several spots to the top of the list, after its foreclosure rate increased 30 percent over the last month. The Southwest also continued to suffer harshly from the housing crisis, with Arizona and Nevada bearing the second and third highest foreclosure rates, respectively.
The report found that Chicago’s foreclosure rate increased 56 percent from one year ago, giving it the fourth highest foreclosure rate of the 20 largest metropolitan areas in the US. The Chicago area had a foreclosure filing on 1 in every 252 housing units. Metro areas with a higher foreclosure rate were Phoenix, Atlanta, and the Riverside-San Bernardino area in Southern California, which bore a foreclosure rate of 1 in 179.
However, with 15,066, Chicago had the highest overall number of properties with foreclosure filings of any major metro area; the second highest was Los Angeles, with 10,816. Foreclosure activity was reported as increasing in half of the 20 largest metro areas in the country.
Nationally, there were 109,051 foreclosure starts in May, in which default or scheduled home-auction notices were filed for the first time. This marks a 12 percent increase in foreclosure starts since April and a 16 percent increase from a year ago. Some states saw huge increases in foreclosure starts, such as New Jersey (118 percent), Pennsylvania (97 percent), and Florida (83 percent). The report also noted that May marks the first month in almost two and a half years that foreclosure starts increased on an annual basis, and the first time in three months that overall foreclosure filings rose above 200,000.
Seventeen states saw an increase in bank repossessions of homes, including Illinois, where the rate increased an incredible 65 percent from a year ago. Nationwide, banks repossessed 54,844 homes in May, up 7 percent from April.
The Associated Press (AP) noted in its coverage of the report that if the last five years are any indication, as many as half of the homes now entering the foreclosure process could end up being repossessed. Banks started the foreclosure process against nearly 9 million US homes between January 2007 and last month; of those, they have repossessed nearly 4.5 million.
Contradicting the many claims made by major media outlets and the Obama administration that the country is slowly recovering from the housing crisis, RealtyTrac noted that the jump in new foreclosure filings could mark the beginning of another wave of foreclosure activity, which would depress home values and the housing market.
The sudden increase in home foreclosures and bank repossessions is in no way accidental or unforeseen. It is in fact the result of a deliberate policy pursued by the Obama administration on behalf of the financial elite. In the fall of 2010, a scandal erupted when it emerged that many of the major banks were relying on forged and incomplete documents in order to foreclose upon homes. As the AP noted, “Foreclosure activity, as measured by the number of homes receiving foreclosure-related notices, slowed sharply last year as banks grappled with allegations that they had been processing foreclosures without verifying documents.”
However, in February of this year, the Obama administration orchestrated a settlement between state governments and the big banks that “has since cleared the way for banks to move against homeowners who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments.”
The deal reportedly required the banks to pay $5.9 billion, a pittance, in cash to the states and to commit another $25 billion ostensibly to assist those homeowners whose mortgages are underwater. However, it was soon revealed by the Financial Times that as much as two thirds of the latter amount would in fact be provided by taxpayers, by way of the preexisting federal Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) (see “Bank foreclosure fraud to be rewarded at taxpayer expense”).
In addition, the settlement halted all investigations into the banks’ mishandling of foreclosures, provided immunity from future prosecutions and financial liability for criminal practices related to the foreclosure crisis, and did not even require an admission of wrongdoing.
Not a single family who had their house illegally seized by the banks were returned to their home. If a family successfully pursued the onerous process of proving that they were illegally evicted, they were to be offered the contemptuous sum of $1,500.
The settlement, which at the time Obama claimed would “speed relief to the hardest-hit homeowners,” has in fact had quite the opposite effect. Now that the major banks no longer have to worry about the fraud investigation, they are aggressively and ruthlessly pursuing homeowners who can no longer afford their mortgages. The result is that the Obama administration has delivered yet another windfall to the financial oligarchy through the immiseration of a large section of the working population.
The author also recommends:
The foreclosure fraud settlement: An amnesty for Wall Street criminals
[13 February 2012]
Documents in US foreclosure settlement highlight lawlessness of the banks
[16 March 2012]
*
AMERICA – POSTED! NO LEGAL NEED
APPLY! BUT WE STILL GET THE BILLS FOR THE LA RAZA WELFARE AND CRIME STATE IN
OUR BORDERS!
JOE LEGAL and
JOSE ILLEGAL… who will vote for obama? JOSE ILLEGAL GETS AMERICAN JOBS WITH A
STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER. OBAMA HAS PROMISED ILLEGALS HE WOULD SABOTAGE
E-VERIFY, WHICH THE LA RAZA DEMS IN MEXIFORNIA HAVE OUTLAWED!
JOE LEGAL
STILL GETS THE TAX BILLS TO PAY FOR JOSE ILLEGAL’S “FREE” ANCHOR BABY BIRTHING
AND WELFARE, “FREE” EDUCATION, “FREE” DEM DREAM ACTS, “FREE” OBAMACARE and MEX
CRIME TIDAL WAVE.
CAN OBAMA
PUNK JOE LEGAL TO VOTE FOR HIS “CHANGE” AGAIN?
OBAMA HAS
PROMISED ILLEGALS GREATER LOOTING IS AROUND THE NEXT ELECTION. THEY JUST NEED
TO GET REGISTERED TO ILLEGALLY VOTE!
MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500 ARE GENEROUS DONORS TO LA
RAZA – THE MEXICAN FASCIST POLITICAL PARTY
(THESE FIGURES
ARE DATED. NOW CALCULATED TO BE $300 TO $400 BILLION PER YEAR!)
“The
principal beneficiaries of our current immigration policy are affluent
Americans who hire immigrants at substandard wages for low-end work. Harvard
economist George Borjas estimates that American workers lose $190 billion
annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market
at the low-wage end.”Christian Science Monitor
If job creation is the goal, make E-Verify mandatory - TheHill.com
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