Maine Owl

"End the Honeymoon"

I totally agree with this call for agitation from political analyst John B. Judis:

Judis: I think the main reason that Obama is having trouble is that there is not a popular left movement that is agitating for him to go well beyond where he would even ideally like to go. Sure, there are leftwing intellectuals like Paul Krugman who are beating the drums for nationalizing the banks and for a $1 trillion-plus stimulus. But I am not referring to intellectuals, but to movements that stir up trouble among voters and get people really angry. Instead, what exists of a popular left is either incapable of action or in Obama's pocket.

Somebody has to start pushing back on Obama on two immediate things: (1) He must stop just giving his Republican opponents room to maneuver. Republican politicians who are inexorably wedded to the disastrous status quo that they relentlessly created for three decades will not be of any use in repairing the economy the bulk of the population must live in. (2) Obama must stop allowing total sway to bad actors like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, whose purpose seems to be to enable his rich friends in the banking industry to drain the Treasury in order to torch bales of cash in what will be an ill-fated program to re-inflate the bubble economy under the guise of a "free market" solution that is psychologically preferred.

A full elucidation of this second point is available from Michael Hudson, professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and economic adviser to former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich in a Counterpunch piece HERE:

Hudson: For Wall Street, free markets are "free? of public regulation against predatory lending; ?free? of taxing the wealthy so as to shift the burden onto labor; ?free? for the financial sector to wrap itself around the ?real? economy like parasitic ivy around a tree to extract the surplus.

This is a travesty of freedom. ...

There is an alternative to ward all this off, and it is the classic definition of freedom from debt peonage and predatory credit. The only real solution to today?s debt overhang is a debt write-down. Until this occurs, debt service will crowd out spending on goods and services and there will be no recovery. Debt deflation will drag the economy down while assets are transferred further into the hands of the wealthiest 10 percent of the population, operating via the financial sector.

If Obama means what he says, he would use his office as a bully pulpit to urge repeal the present harsh creditor-oriented bankruptcy law sponsored by the banks and credit-card companies [and pushed through by then-Senator Joe Biden. Editors]. He would campaign to restore the long-term trend of laws favoring debtors rather than creditors, and introduce legislation to restore the practice of writing down debts to reflect the debtor?s ability to pay, imposing market reality to debts that are far in excess of realistic valuations.

There you have it. Somebody has to reign in the bankers' desire to wipe their asses with one last pile of our public resources while we sink permanently into the depths of debt slavery.