HARPER: OBAMA A WALL STREET REPUBLICAN... OR WORSE

 
No sooner had the ink dried on President Obama's latest assault on our U.S. Federal Constitution, than word came down from the Congressional Budget Office that the whole agreement to extend the debt ceiling and impose equal cuts on Federal spending, was based on a thoroughly false assumption.  It seems that the CBO scoring on the debt ceiling/budget cuts deal was based on the premise that the U.S. economy, measured in GDP, would grow at a rate of 2.8 percent for 2011.  For the first six months of the year, GDP growth has been an anemic 0.8 percent, with budget cuts assured to keep those numbers in the gutter for the rest of the year and beyond.  For every fall of 1 percent of GDP from the projections, you have to add $750 billion in added deficit, due mostly to revenue losses from the listless economy.  If the 0.8 percent figure holds, we will have an added $1.5 trillion in debt or something close to that by yearend.  The whole deal is a great big fraud, that grabbed an enormous amount of media attention for much of July.

 
Now, we also have a second major assault on fundamentals of the U.S. Constitution.  First, we had the Libya war.  Whether you favor the ouster of Qaddafi or not, the fact is that the President violated Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives the U.S. Congress the sole authority to declare war.  Leave the War Powers Resolution aside.  This is the U.S. Constitution that has been flaunted by Mr. Obama.  Just last week, Aviation Week reported that the U.S. Air Force is part of a 24/7 AWACS operation over Libya, targeting all the bombing raids.  So we are still fully engaged in war in Libya.
 
This week, the deal struck between President Obama and the Congress created a "Super-Congress" committee of 12, that has been given the authority to make decisions on taxation and debt policies that are the exclusive domain of the Legislative Branch.  Nowhere in the Constitution does the Congress have the authority to turn over any of its powers to some rump body.  I am not a Fox News fan, but Judge Napolitano certainly made the case that this is a cut and dried violation of the Constitution, and some members of the House or Senate are going to have to take this to Court.  It is a really serious breach of the Constitution that must be undone.
 
As far as President Obama goes, I have come to see him as a latter day Rockefeller Republican.  He is a creature of Wall Street, not the American people.  He has bonded with leading Republican lawmakers in a way that goes way beyond his fractured relations to the Congressional Democrats.  He practically got down on his knees last week to beg Tim Geithner to stay on as Treasury Secretary, at least through the 2012 elections.  To even think of this President as a Democrat, at least in the tradition of FDR or JFK or even LBJ, is beyond my imagination.  True, there have been Wall Street Democrats down through the ages.  Martin Van Buren's name comes to mind.  August Belmont, the Rothschild banker who came to New York City and became the Chairman of the Democratic Party (nationally) for nearly 40 years, is another.  But Obama goes way beyond that.  Maybe he didn't "cave in" to the radical rightwing of the Republicans.  Maybe he is just a Rockefeller Republican, and the whole rotten and already-failed deal fits his ideological axioms to a tee.

Comments

[Cato the Censor]

You have captured my thoughts exactly as to the nature of President Obama's political orientation. He's not a Kenyan. He's not a Muslim. He's a Republican. Very closely similar to Herbert Hoover, in point of fact.

[William R. Cumming]

Nice post! The election of 2012 will probably confirm your analysis before the campaign is over. There is no question that quid pro quo's to WALL STREET, a WALL STREET that deserved trials, criminal trials, not favor in Washington, will someday be revealed as totally corrupt. Proof--the President and Tim Geithners next jobs.

[VietnamVet]

Correct.

I am so old that I wish “Rockefeller Republican” was not an epitaph. If only, President Obama was an “Eisenhower Republican” or showing my old Washington State roots, a “Dan Evans Republican”. They would take on Bank of American and the Oligarchs. Wipe out the credit default debt, right the housing market and get Americans back to work.

This is what George H W Bush did on a smaller scale in the Savings & Loan Crisis. Note: the S & L Crisis was the first harbinger, along with Enron, of the devastation to America that deregulation and privatization will cause; for example, by the 2008 Financial Crash or by the 2003 Invasion of Iraq with contractor supplied logistics and security.

[Charles I]

Well thanks that certainly clears it up for me.

I'm not a lawyer, tho I was, I dimly recall an entire branch of common, constitutional & admin law on delegation.

Howcum the War Powers Resolution, isn't it an Act, ever run by the Supremes? Guess there really is only one Money Party, own the whole place lock, stock & barrel.

Vote early and vote often.

[Roy G.]

Per Col. Lang's post yesterday, Obama is part of the US counter-revolution – the fight by Wall Street to kill the New Deal and bring back the Gilded Age.

[Will Reks]

The Tea Party caucus is intent on preventing even recess appointments on Obama's nominees for federal appointments. I believe he doesn't think he can get someone through to replace Geithner.

I don't think Obama is an aberration amongst the 'elite' of the Democratic party. They have been moving towards the right and courting Wall Street support since the collapse of the union movement and the rise of Reagan republicanism.

We no longer have any mainstream political parties that represent the interests
of average working Americans.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I think you are missing the fact that both in the United States and in Europe the main effort has been to rescue the Financial Sector with public funds.

I think that because this sector has been largely responsible for economic growth since 1998 (if not earlier), and in the absence of job-generating growth elsewhere, effort must be spent in helping it regain its health.

In the 1980s and 1990s the economies of Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union were rectructured.

Now we are witnessing the restructuring of the North American and European economies under the duress of post-Financial Bubble disaster.

The economic status quoa ante of 2007 cannot be recovered; this fact must be faced before further planning can be made; in my opinion.

[Babak Makkinejad]

All:

US Debt:

http://www.businessinsider.com/who-owns-us-debt-2011-7#

Hong Kong: $121.9 billion (0.9 percent)

Caribbean banking centers: $148.3 (1 percent)

Taiwan: $153.4 billion (1.1 percent)

Brazil: $211.4 billion (1.5 percent)

Oil exporting countries: $229.8 billion (1.6 percent)

Mutual funds: $300.5 billion (2 percent)

Commercial banks: $301.8 billion (2.1 percent)

State, local and federal retirement funds: $320.9 billion (2.2 percent)

Money market mutual funds: $337.7 billion (2.4 percent)

United Kingdom: $346.5 billion (2.4 percent)

Private pension funds: $504.7 billion (3.5 percent)

State and local governments: $506.1 billion (3.5 percent)

Japan: $912.4 billion (6.4 percent)

U.S. households: $959.4 billion (6.6 percent)

China: $1.16 trillion (8 percent)

The U.S. Treasury: $1.63 trillion (11.3 percent)

Social Security trust fund: $2.67 trillion (19 percent)

[Mongoose]

There is no "Left" or even a moderate "Left" left on the U.S. Hell, Nixon would have a hard time registering as a Republican if he were alive. No real political differences separate the Dems & Repubs anymore (I'm excluding the Teabaggers--to me they embody the extremism of the middle, a la politico-cultural Fascism). Perhaps that's hyperbole but....it smacks of the truth to me.

[Adam L Silverman]

Harper,

The President is begging Secretary Geithner to stay because he is under the impression that he can not, and therefore will not, get any future appointees through Congress. Very large numbers of his executive agency appointments are on holds or being modern filibustered (no marathon orations necessary) in the Senate. Even though it's on it's Labor Day recess, the Republican majority House has not formally recessed to prevent the President from filling these open positions, many of them federal judgeships, crucial financial, economic, and security appointments. The deal he just signed was bad, and I do not doubt that any replacement for Secretary Geithner would also be tied to Wall Street, but he's trying to ge him to stay because he does not think he will be allowed to replace him.

[Ken Hoop]

Wall Street owns Obama but terms have becomes meaningless if we can now call the radical right wing of the GOP the Rockefeller wing, as Harper hints. Or if we are now saying runaway Finance Capitalism is radical right wing, let us all become Bolsheviks. National Bolsheviks preferably.

[Thomas]

Well, the Gentleman was a professor at the University of Chicago (Neo-con U).

[confusedponderer]

VVet,
in the Savings and Loan crisis the US had some regulators still, and the put some of the miscreants who caused the mess to jail for their crimes.

Not so any more. I think, looking back, George H. W. Bush was the last US president I respect. His son certainly didn't think of punishing miscreants of that sort, neither did Obama.

[walrus]

It's much too late to do anything for the economy that will blunt the pain for average American with the current Constitutional arrangements - short of finding a new FDR and have him winning a primary against a sitting Democrat President Obama followed by a win in November.

This picture says it all, guess who is in the towed lifeboat?:

http://www.arts-wallpapers.com/galleries/Michael-Sowa_Paintings/imagepages/image1.htm

[highlander]

As a very active FORMER, democrat and republican,now an independent, who has played in several presidential races and more than one dog catcher race.

You tend to be a intelligent lot on this blog, but most of you have your cranium fully buried up your anal unit, when it comes to contemporary american politics.

[J]

highlander,

What gets me is that we're paying interest on our own money, and to the Fed Reserve no less. Now what is wrong with that picture?

[mbrenner]

As we approach the newly re-christened MONEY MANAGEMENT DAY, it is good to see a bit of the truth come out as to who Mr. Barack Obama really is. great surprise? Well, look at these quotes from his pre-2008 ('liberal Democrat') days. Read them and weep.

Here's an excerpt from his book Audacity of Hope:
"Reagan spoke to America's longing for order, our need to believe that we are not simply subject to blind, impersonal forces, but that we can shape our individual and collective destinies, so long as we rediscover the traditional virtues of hard work, patriotism, person responsibility, optimism, and faith.
That Reagan's message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was that government at every level had become too cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often, bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities. Reagan may have exaggerated the sins of the welfare state….Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, and loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of a common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster. And the more his critics carped, the more those critics played into the role he'd written for them--a band of out-of-touch, tax-and-spend, blame-America-first, politically correct elites (Audacity of Hope, 31-32)

In 2006, a relatively new Senator Obama was the only senator to speak at the inaugural gathering of the Alexander Hamilton Project launched by Wall Street Democrats like Robert Rubin and Roger Altman, Bill Clinton's treasury secretary and deputy secretary. Obama praised them as "innovative, thoughtful policymakers." It was Rubin's crusade to deregulate Wall Street in the late '90s that led directly to the economic meltdown of 2008 and our current crisis.

[shanks]

It seems that the neocons had the last laugh, then, isn't it? Not a dumb schmuck as Bush but a Democratic Trojan to destroy the country in form of
"...has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous."
-Julius Caesar

The man managed to triangulate better than Clinton to take the ship on to the shoals, hasn't he? All the people got fooled all the time.

[J]

WRC, All,

I have to ask the question, my inquiring mind wants to know -- Isn't the 'Super-Congress' an Unconstitutional entity? And if it is, should it not be addressed by another name -- The Twelve Tyrants From Hell?

My inquiring mind wants to know.

[J]

Which brings me back to the beginning of it all, namely isn't 'National Default' ILLEGAL under our U.S. Constitution, so the institution of the 'Twelve Tyrants From Hell' by Obama/Boehner/Reid/McConnell/Pelosi/Hoyer ILLEGAL in and of itself? Can then those who comprise the Twelve from the Congress be held legally liable for 'their' illegalities in violation of our U.S. Constitution?

My inquiring mind wants to know. Since the FBI is a part of DoJ which is part of the Executive Branch (which cannot investigate the legislative or judicial branches), who then is capable of bringing the Twelve Tyrants From Hell to justice for their Constitutional Sins?

[graywolf]

"Obama is a Republican"...on what planet?

[Marcus]

Babak "I think that because this sector has been largely responsible for economic growth since 1998..."

I don't classify Ponzi schemes as "economic growth". It was a swindle plain and simple and the swindlers are being bailed out by the rubes.

The irony is that it was so corrupt and greedy that even the whole of the middle class assets will not be enough to make good on the financial systems' bad bets. And the system was never fixed! The Ponzi continues with the aid of the Federal Reserve, Congress, and Obama.

The banks are still bankrupt, which explains the continued "mark to model" Enron type of accounting allowed by Congress for this corrupt segment. Here is another irony, S&P just downgraded the US debt! The same organization that graded bundled sub-prime mortgages AAA! The Three Stooges could not have done it better.

The banks should have paid for their mistakes a la the Sweden solution in the 1990s, make the shareholders pay and the taxpayers recoup their investments from future profits. It is insane that To Big To Fail is allowed to stand, but that is our political reality, corrupt to the core.

Babak, the ultimate "reorganization" in Russia was called default, coming soon to a circus near you.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Marc:

I agree that from a certain point of view the financial sector's development looked like the cancerous growth of gambling establishments all over North America.

But one would have been a minority of 3 - oneself, the late Paul M. Sweezy, and Patrick J. Buchanan - to call into question a scheme that was generating in excess of 300 trillion dollars of essentially I.O.U.s that the entire planet cannot pay down.

You see, in U.K., 0.25 of their GDP came from such financial shennanigans. In US, you had distortions in which people with hard engineering degrees from the best US schools such as MIT, Corenell, Stanford sought employment in that sector as opposed to the dirty, painful, and demanding work in manufacturing sector for a pittance.

It also deprived US manufacturing sector as well as some other sectors from much needed capital. I mean whay put money in a manufacturing plant with a 6% return when you can park it in Wall Street and get 14%?

I agree that too-big-too fail is not feasible any longer. In US insurance and re-insurance sector, there are laws and regulations that control the grwoth of these entities - for obvious reasons. I think it will be a good idea to extend that to banks and whathaveyou.

Default for the US Government is not an option. They will print money (indirectly taxing the entire world) in order to avoid default first.

That, in my opinion, is the most likely scenario.

And even high-inflation - around 15 to 20 percent a year - will not address the problem of 300 trillion dollars of worthless debt.

[Marcus]

You sound a bit of the apologist Babak: "In US, you had distortions in which people with hard engineering degrees from the best US schools such as MIT, Corenell, Stanford sought employment in that sector as opposed to the dirty, painful, and demanding work in manufacturing sector for a pittance."

Poor engineering graduates, have a miserable future making sub-250k jobs in an office next to the sweating plebes making 30k per year. Just because almost everyone got caught up in the greed and artifice does not mitigate their guilt. They knew that real-estate could not increase 5-10% per year long-term and knew the historical corrections of bubbles.

15 to 20% inflation is effectively monetary default if 10 year notes are paying under that rate. And as you say: "And even high-inflation - around 15 to 20 percent a year - will not address the problem of 300 trillion dollars of worthless debt." The US Federal Reserve has guaranteed most of this primary debt and will default.

The craven nature of our political leaders is surpassed by the leaders in our financial sector. We are not poorly served, we are being maliciously swindled.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Marcus:

There is no issue of "guilt" here; people did not violate any moral or legal or religious codes.

What I had hoped to convey was the distortions that the growth of financial sector introduced and the reluctance of very many people to look at its ramifications; just like the story by the late Issac B. Singer - "The Gentleman from Krakow".

US Government has not guaranteed the 300 trillion dollars of financial instruments that are floating around the world; that is a global problem to which I have not heard any solutions. I think largely because the governments do not know how to deal with it except by essentially nationalizing their financial sectors for decades to come.

In US, since the Federal Government both prints money (creates liquidity) and sells bonds, it can become the lender of the first and last resort. That is, the Federal Reserve Branches could start acting as both commercial as well as community banks while the US Federal Regulators shutdown all the illiquid banks in the United States - in effect socializing banking.

This could continue until the private and public debt in US reaches a level that is manageable, say 50% of revenue for households, private enterprises, governments etc.

Decades later, when the finanial sector has been reformed, these Federally financed banks can be sold back to the public or to investors.