HOW STUPID can President Obama be?
HOW ARROGANT can a leader be?
Well, following the succesful conclusion (victory) of US & (genuine!) coalition forces after Gulf War-1, President George H.W. Bush (Sr.) enjoyed a STRATOSPHERIC 80%+ approval ratings. But by November 1992, Mr. Bush couldn't even muster 45% of the popular vote, albeit in a 3-way election with Arkansas Democratic Governor Bill Clinton stealing much of Ross Perot's "BUSH DEFICITS ARE KILLING the American Economy" thunder and winning the 1992 presidential election.
Which is exactly the point. IT ONLY TAKES the American public ONE YEAR to TURN on even the most admired politicians. This pattern was REPEATED of course in _1994_, when Americans considered the Bush-1 Recession to no longer be the Bush-1 Recession, but to BE THE CLINTON/DEMOCRAT RECESSION, and showed entrenched, insular Senate House leaders the door, the Democrats losing the 1994 election to back-bench bomb-thrower Newt Gingrich's "Contract on America" radical right-wing agenda (elitism) masked as populism - the Republican Party's main electioneering theme (besides "moral values" and other reactionary issues like gun ownership and minority-bashing, gay-bashing, government bashing themes.)
SO here we are, the 4th month of the Obama administration, and UNDER HIS WATCH, CHRYSLER corporation is DECLARING BANKRUPTCY, and if it comes back in business, it will be as a subsidiary of.. FIAT Motors !!!
But far more troubling than the bankruptcy of one troubled auto-maker, is the LOOMING FORECLOSURE CRISIS of... ANOTHER 1.6 MILLION homeowners in the coming year!
NOT including the LOOMING REAL-ESTATE crisis!
NOT including the looming CREDIT CARD crisis!
Mr. Obama's ENTIRE Economic Policy', such as it is, is focused on THE BIG BANKS who CREATED this CREDIT BUBBLE and resulting BUST.
For an entire decade, the Wall Street executives and bankers took it as their "right" to SHOUT for ever lower Fed Reserve interest rates to fuel their over-hyped profits and "asset" valuations, This approach to "finance" exploded in a hypobolic curve, with the "financial geniuses" such as LAWRENCE SUMMERS and ROBERT RUBINS presiding over the DEREGULATION of those financial markets - both under the Clinton Democrat White House, and the Bush-Cheney "Loot the Treasury" White House.
To begin with, PHIL GRAMM had been at the EPICENTER of the Savings & Loan DEREGULATION debacle that led to Bush-1 LOSING re-election in 1992, despite the tremendous advantages of the incumbency, and Gulf-War victory.
#2. Former ALCOA Chairman PAUL O'NEILL, Bush's first Secretary of Treasury, had WARNED Americans that not only were Bush & Cheney determined to INVADE IRAQ from "day one" of the new Bush administration (January 2001), but that they were also DETERMINED to LOOT the US Treasury, with surplus-debilitating DEFICIT SPENDING.
#3. PAUL KRUGMAN had been warning about the Republican's CHRONIC DESIRES to BREAK the US Treasury, at least two full years before the majority of Americans had even heard of George W. Bush - by 1998, Krugman was in a full-throated roar that Republican "TAX CUTS FOR RICH" deficit-spending economics were going to engineer a NEW American economic crisis.
#4. And of course we, Americans, had been there before: PHIL GRAMM, DICK ARMEY, and Enron KEN LAY had ALL been TEXAS ECONOMICS PhD's, who had all been touted as "The New Coming of America's Economic Greatness" - immediately before they PRESIDED OVER Economic DISASTERS.
Well, here it is the 101st day of the Obama administration - and today the US Senate SHOT DOWN the CREDIT CARD REFORM, and MORTGAGE "CRAM-DOWN" consumer protection bills - and President Obama WAS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN.
AWOL on THE FIGHT of the Decade, Mr. Obama TAKES IT AS HIS RIGHT to DISBURSE HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of US taxpayer dollars (trillions) - TO the very big banksters who created this DEREGULATION economic nightmare - without a SINGLE AUDIT or explanation, and he joins his Emanuel/Rubin/Summers/Geithner big banksters team in saying "SO WHAT?" to the looming 1.6 MILLION American homeowners FACING EVICTION in 2009, even as the Big Banksters soak up BILLIONS of dollars that SHOULD be going for mortgage relief.
(Note: a FORECLOSED HOME _DEVALUES_ all the OTHER homes in the neighborhood, as well - BILLIONS MORE middle-class EQUITY VANISHING into the FORECLOSURE accounts of the Big, insatiable banksters.)
FOR SHAME.
