In a rather extraordinary column in Forbes, Michael Maiello argues that the right-wingers complaining the President Obama is a wealth re-distributing European-style socialist have it all wrong: Actually, he's a Russian-style oligarch -- the reason that I have illustrated this post with DVD cover for Pavel Lungin's most excellent Oligarkh. Maiello writes:While the "angry white men" movement assembles into tea parties, the real anger should be felt by those on the left who have so far watched the president continue to follow an economic rescue plan that was outlined by George Bush and Hank Paulson. The only thing that Obama has socialized are the losses incurred by Wall Street's major banks like Citigroup (NYSE: C) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and, through the government's continued willingness to write checks to AIG (NYSE: AIG), foreign financial firms like Société Générale and Deutsche Bank.
Now the Public Private Partnership will actually allow financial institutions to borrow money from you through non-recourse loans to invest in toxic assets -- If it works out well, they get rich. If not, the risk falls to the taxpayers.
A nice deal for the banks, and not surprising given that it was designed by bond genius Bill Gross. The Obama as Oligarch argument is a more mild alternative to the conspiracy theories put forth by wingbat pseudo documentaries like this one, which argues that President Obama is a puppet of Wall Street designed to bring about a New World Order. Maiello concludes:
There's so much ire about the idea that one taxpayer might be asked to subsidize the failing mortgage of another but, in truth (and in the best case scenario) all taxpayers should look back at Obama's actions in a few years and realize that what they really subsidized were the profits and ambitions of a radically wealthy elite. New Orleans hasn't been rebuilt, but the government is hard at work on Greenwich, Conn., and Abu Dhabi.
Interesting stuff and, to some extent, hard to argue with. The argument for Obama's policies is that we are in treacherous times and we need to act quickly -- and simply don't have time to enact economy-saving policies that don't disproportionately benefit the world's wealthiest people. I tend to believe that explanation, but there's no denying that a few people will make an enormous amount of money from this "economic recovery."
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-27-2009 @ 10:36PM
joecola said...
"I tend to believe that explanation" he says, even though much of it defies logic. Hmm, must be something in the Kool-Aid.