Saturday, January 15, 2011

Obama has done it again!

    President Obama has decided to promote Gene Sperling to be his head economic advisor.  He is a former Clinton economic advisor with, in my opinion, too close of ties to wall street, and specifically to Goldman Sachs( he made over $887,000.00 from Goldman Sachs in 2008). This is the second advisor President Obama has named this week.  Both men are definately wall street insiders, which make both picks very troubling. Considering all the problems wall street has foisted on the public at large, it is mystifying, to say the least, on why Obama keeps insisting that the very people who got us into this mess, are somehow, going to get us out of this mess they created. 
    Wall street is still taking home huge profits and bonuses at the expense of the rest of us.  They are still
using dirivatives to make bets on real estate mortgages failing, and taking home huge profits on those bets.  The people who are harmed the most are the home owners.  It doesn't matter if you are one who is being foreclosed upon, or if your the one who is under water on your mortgage, the result is similiar.  Both are  being harmed. 
    There are many banks out there who are supposed to be helping home owners stay in their homes. However, the hard truth of the matter is, that they make more money betting on those same owners going into foreclosure, than they would make if they actually helped them. I have heard of some people who have found that their local banks have signed up to be loan modifiers, but the banks don't actually even try to do so, because of the profits to be made on those home owners.  There is a sickness in the business community here in the United states, and that sickness is called GREED!
    William Daley is Obama's pick for chief of staff, yet another wall street insider, his job is supposed to be
to smooth things over between Obama and wall street as well as other business interests.  To my way of thinking, he is nothing more that a highly paid lobbiest, who has the presidents ear, and who can make life miserable for those of us on the lower rungs of society.  I don't hold out any real hope for him making things better. He, after all, comes into Washington D.C. with a ready made conflict of interest.  He holds considerable amounts of stock in J.P.Morgan which is yet another wall street behemoth. Daley's other job is to make Obama the perfect candidate for  re-election in 2012.  I personnally am not buying what he is selling.  Make no mistake, I do think Obama is a smart guy, but he is surrounding himself with wall street hacks, whose character and influence is immediately suspect.  I don't believe that the interests of average Americans are being served fairly by such people.
The Wall street reform law that was passed last year didn't go nearly far enough in regulating wall street or the big banks. If the congress had actually wanted to do the right thing, they would have re-instated  the Glass-Steigall Act and broken up the wall street banks.
       Obama did a good thing in Tucson, however the reality of the day,  is still going to win out over that feel good speech he made.

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