Obama's Dream Team to Carry Forward Bush's Legacy.

[Guest guest]

"Dream Team" Selectionshttp://www.mathaba.net/rss/?x=6129711. Timothy GeithnerCurrently

the New York Federal Reserve Bank president and vice-chairman of the

Fed Open Market Committee (FOMC), he'll head the team as Treasury

Secretary along with current Fed chairman Bernanke whose term runs

until January 31, 2010.After his education, he joined

(international consultants) Kissinger Associates for three years and

then the US Treasury's International Affairs division in 1988. He

remained at Treasury in various posts until 2002 when he left for the

Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in the international

economics department. He also served at the International Monetary Fund

as director of Policy Development and Review from 2001 - 2003 after

which he was named New York Fed president. With these

credentials, he's an insider's insider and hardly a surprising pick.

Wall Street approved with a sharp rally that continued through

Thanksgiving week as others on the economic team were also praised. And

why not, elitists all and assembled for a common purpose that hardly

needs explaining.Geithner's been partnered with Paulson and

Bernanke in their Treasury-looting scheme. His appointment signals more

of the same which is why Wall Street approves. It's also reported that

he was the principal architect behind the Bear Stearns bailout, and

various other deals, including Fannie and Freddie, Merrill Lynch,

Washington Mutual, Wachovia, the demise of Lehman Bros., Citigroup, and

AIG.It's gotten $150 billion so far (and counting) to buy some

of its collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) to clean out its credit

default swap (CDS) insurance on them. But the effort only deals with a

small part of AIG's CDSs, and its woes are similar to what ails all of

Wall Street. If Geithner won't address them any differently, he's the

wrong man at the wrong time for a vital task to cure a very sick

economy.Take the $55 trillion CDS problem alone. If enough of

them default in the coming months, no amount of bailing will save

things. Yet Paulson and Geithner believe these levered bets should be

paid in full. With what, short of reckless amounts of currency

debasing? The alternative apparently is off the table - the fiscal

sanity of letting bankruptcy be the price for financial imprudence. In

other words, take the pain upfront and not let this monster of a

problem drag out for a decade or longer, leave much greater wreckage in

its wake, and threaten world economies with it. Geithner will

apparently risk it, and even by Las Vegas standards it's a very bad bet.It

affects the entire financial industry as well as companies with

high-risk debt like the auto giants. Even Warren Buffett's Berkshire

Hathaway who's warned repeatedly about the problem, and this is only

one among others that would challenge the most dedicated and talented

of policy makers. Based on what he'll likely do, Geithner isn't one of

them, but try hearing that through the din of praise for him. It

remains to be seen but he'll likely continue the same failed bailout

policies, pile more debt on the current unsustainable amount, and add

lots of (real estate) infrastructure fiscal stimulus for the rich. As

economist Michael Hudson explains: "To a mortgage banker, a

commercial developer or real estate company is a prime customer, the

bulwark of bank balance sheets. It is hard to imagine a new American

infrastructure program not turning into a new well of real estate gains

for the FIRE (finance,

insurance and real estate) sector. Real estate owners on favorably

situated sites will sell out to buyers-on-credit, creating a vast new

profitable loan market for banks. The debt spiral will continue upward"

and make a monster of a problem even greater. Given how

strapped state and city budgets are, "privatiz(ation) from the outset"

is planned and Geithner got the job to do it. He's not for "change you

can believe in" or what people voted for from Obama. Hudson

again: "The change that Mr. Obama is talking about is largely marginal

to (the top 1%'s) wealth, not touching its economic substance - or its

direction." He may give wage earners some relief (to pay off their bank

debts), but top earners "prefer not to earn income" and rely heavily on

capital gains. They try to avoid losses and when can't get the

government to bail them out. Obama supports it, so expect billions more

for the rich, crumbs for the many, and torrents of high-sounding

platitudes to soothe them.Hudson compares Obama to Boris

Yeltsin - a giver who kept on giving "for the kleptocrats to whom the

public domain and decades of wealth were given with no quid pro quo."

And he's assembled the same ("anti-labor, pro-financial team") that

empowered Russia's kleptocrats, let them loot the country, and for the

most part keep it.His key economic advisor, Robert Rubin, was

Clinton's Treasury Secretary. After leaving, he helped manage Citigroup

close to collapse where it may end up anyway since it's problems are so

huge perhaps no amount of billions may save it. Now he's manipulated

his protege team into top posts (including Geithner) with the rest of

them profiled below.Even the Wall Street Journal criticizes

Rubin for defending his role and taking no responsibility for Citi's

problems. The Journal asks: "Why are Robert Rubin and other

directors still employed? Another Sunday night, another ad hoc bank

rescue" with taxpayers footing the bill. "Such a record of persistent

failure suggests a larger, (perhaps) systemic management problem. If

taxpayers have to risk so much to save Citigroup, then regulators

should at least exert the discipline to break up this behemoth so it is

never again too big to succeed, much less fail." What the

Journal didn't say is that any bank or business too big to fail is too

big to exist, and anti-trust laws should never let them get this big in

the first place.As for Rubin, are his choices right for high

Obama administration posts? Might they not wreck the economy the way

Rubin & company hurt Citi. Worse still, were picked to do it - to

suck all possible trillions out of it, then leave behind an empty hulk

and mass human wreckage when they're done. Under Bush, we're well along

toward it, so maybe Wall Street chose Obama to finish the job.2. Lawrence SummersSeeing

how Wall Street loves him is reason enough to worry as he's slated to

be Obama's chief economic advisor as head of the National Economic

Council (NEC). This writer's November 10 Obama Mania article said this

about him:"From 1982 - 1983, he served on the Reagan

administration's Council of Economic Advisors. Then in 1993 in the

Clinton administration as Under-Treasury secretary for International

Affairs and as Treasury Secretary from 1999 - 2001. Earlier from 1991 -

1993, he was chief economist for the World Bank where he authored a

controversial memo stating that "the economic logic behind dumping a

load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we

should face up to that.Summers was later president of

Harvard University from 2001 - 2006 where controversy again dogged him.

For his contentious relations with faculty members and for suggesting

that the presence of few women in upper-level science and math

positions was because of innate differences between men and women. The

combination led to his 2006 resignation.""He now teaches at

Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is a consultant to Goldman

Sachs, and is a managing director of the DE Shaw & Company hedge

fund. His name is being floated as the leading candidate for Treasury

secretary, and as Michel Chossudovsky states: "Putting a Hedge Fund

manager (with links to the Wall Street financial establishment) in

charge of the Treasury is tantamount to putting the fox in charge of

the chicken coup," and more evidence that Obama plans the kind of

business as usual that he pledged to get rid of."Treasury no,

NEC yes where along with Geithner and Bernanke he'll be foxy indeed,

and look at his record. In the 1990s, he helped deregulate financial

markets with among other measures the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that

repealed (1933 enacted) Glass-Steagall. It let commercial and

investment banks and insurance companies combine and opened the door to

the kinds of rampant speculation, fraud and abuse that created today's

mess. In 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA)

came next. It was so odious it had to be tucked undebated into an

appropriations bill near the end of Clinton's tenure. It legitimized

"swap agreement" and other "hybrid instruments" at the core of today's

problems. It prevented regulatory oversight of derivatives and

leveraging and turned Wall Street sharks loose on unsuspecting

investors.It also contained the "Enron Loophole" for its "Enron

On-Line" - the first internet-based commodities transaction system,

unregulated to let Enron do as it pleased, and the rest, as they say,

is history.After his World Bank tenure, Summers joined the

Clinton administration in 1993 where he served as Treasury

Under-Secretary for International Affairs and later as Secretary. As a

result, he played a major role in a decade Professor James Petras calls

"the golden age of pillage." Summers was involved in all economic

policy decisions ranging from fiscal ones to NAFTA, WTO, and various

neoliberal responses to the decade's financial crises:-- in 1995, the destruction of Mexico's economy by raising interest rates to unmanageable levels and all of NAFTA's wreckage ;--

pillaging Russia that began before his tenure, continued throughout the

decade, and exploded during the country's 1998 financial crisis; and --

the 1997 Asian crisis; manufactured in Washington; debt bondage and

open markets became the solution, and human wreckage the price for

resolution.At the end of his tenure, Summers was awarded the Alexander Hamilton Medal, the Treasury department's highest honor.3. Bill RichardsonHe'll

become Commerce Secretary, is currently New Mexico's governor, and

served earlier in the Clinton administration as Energy Secretary and UN

Ambassador. He's a former congressman, was Democratic National

Convention chairman in 2004, and Democratic Governors Association

chairman in 2005 and 2006. He also earlier worked for Kissinger

Associates and sat on various energy company boards of directors.4. Peter OrszagAnother

Rubin protege, he'll become Office of Management and Budget director.

He earlier was on the Council of Economics Advisors under Clinton and

has been Congressional Budget Office director since 2007. In 2004, he

co-authored a book titled "Saving Social Security" in which he predicts

its insolvency and advocates a revamping by a combination of payroll

and "benefits adjustments" - meaning slow destruction by cutting

retiree payouts.5. Jason FurmanReportedly to

become a senior economic adviser, he also wants Social Security

benefits cut and the System privatized for Wall Street. Under the

Clinton administration, he served as a special assistant to the

President for Economic Policy and on the Council of Economic Advisors

staff. He also headed the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, a

Robert Rubin-founded economic think tank advocating the policies he

supported as Treasury Secretary that left human wreckage everywhere.Christina RomerA

University of California Berkeley economist, she's been a career

academic thus far and will become Council of Economic Advisors (CEA)

chairperson. She's a student of the Great Depression, a monetarist,

reportedly centrist, and according to UC Berkeley Professor Brad DeLong

she's receptive to short-run fiscal stimulus but believes that large

deficits are harmful.6. Paul VolkerNow age 81,

he's a Trilateralist, corporatist, former (Rockefeller) Chase Manhattan

Bank executive, and ideologically far to the right of center. He

earlier served as Fed chairman from 1979 under Jimmy Carter and Ronald

Reagan until Alan Greenspan replaced him in 1987. He's been a key Obama

economic advisor and will head a special Economic Recovery Advisory

Board to oversea financial markets stabilization policies.He's

no friend of working people and proved it during his tenure as Fed

chairman. In fighting high 1970s inflation, he engineered the 1981 - 82

recession by raising the Fed funds rate to 20% in June 1981 (compared

to 1% currently and nominally near zero).In fact, his role was

far more than fighting inflation. It was to destroy family farms, crush

labor, reduce wages, lower living standards, send unemployment soaring,

rev up deindustrialization, and supercharge the early years of

financialization and casino capitalism. In August 1981, he openly

praised Reagan's firing of 11,000 striking PATCO air traffic

controllers, an act that told business that the day of worker demands

was over and corporate interests above all others would be served.Volker's

been out of Washington for a while, and as one observer puts it: He's

"like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime." He'll continue

bailing out bankers, the auto giants as well, aggressively serve

business interests overall, and do it at the expense of working people

who'll end up worse off than ever under him and the entire Obama

economic team. It's not "change to believe in" unless you're a Wall

Street banker assured of getting no other kind.-- Mathaba author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago If they want money let them ask us directly. We are ready to give it to them.Why do they need to poke our children with these vaccines? Why did not they become robbers or politicians? They can earn money that way too. Why do they have to malign such a noble profession? - A non pediatrician doctor, mother of an autistic child, at Hyderabad, India.

Add more friends to your messenger and enjoy! Invite them now.