President Obama Gives Good Speeches!

President Obama has become a huge disappointment when it comes to saving the country from itself. We had hopes that he would live up to his promise of Change We Can Believe In. It has morphed into more of the same stuff that Little Boy Bush left behind.

The new book series he is writing has been titled, “I Left It Behind”. Harry Truman entered the Oval Office scared out of his mind. He had a nation to attend to. He rolled up his sleeves and placed a sign on his desk, which read, “The Buck Stops Here!”

After attending the inauguration ceremony in the bitter cold, on January 20, 2009, we all had hope for real honest to goodness change. That day, millions of us felt we did the right thing by voted for this guy. We defended his inexperience, his message, and his call for change, but now I, and many other progressives, am heavily disappointed. I have become so disillusioned that I have coined a new name for President Obama. I am now calling him President Peacock because he has begun to strut his colorful plumy feathers in full display for all to admire and applaud. I could forgive a president who struts his stuff about town, such as when he flew into New York City---Manhattan, where he and his misses attended a show, dinner and the splendor of the city that never sleeps. Good On Ya Barack, but Harry Truman would not have done that until he felt the nation’s suffering citizens were willing to say, ‘You deserve it now, Mr. President. You really busted your butt for all of us!”

We had Little Boy Bush riding the jet plane to Crawford, Texas in order to play in his brush pile, wear his cowboy hat, and his fancy boots driving around the dry, acrid and arid shrub plain where he could talk “Texan” and not look so stupid. A war had emblazoned around him, and the economy had seriously begun to show signs of crumbling, yet he took more time off than any president in his first term. So, really what is there to complain about when Mr. and Mrs. Obama decided to fly, not halfway across the country, but just over the state line? Little Boy Bush logged more Air Force One frequent flyer miles than anyone in history.

So lately, President Peacock has been out-sourcing himself in the Middle East giving great speeches about reconciliation, communication, respect for religious beliefs, tolerance, the strength of the U.S. economy and the resiliency of the American people, as well as the goodness of good people, while doing the work to achieve peace along with extinguishing the threats of terrorism and fanatical extremism. Who can argue with those talking points? Yet, Mr. Peacock, what is the best way to achieve those lofty goals of yours, but for the United States to be an example of those goals, and for the president to correct the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression, along with dismantling the evils of the Cheney-Bush legacy. Unfortunately, China is laughing at Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner for claiming the U.S. believes in a strong dollar, as President Obama considers Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke as his chief economic regulator. So, President Peacock hires the Wall-Street pyromaniacs to replant the burned out forest, but then, asks the senior fire starter, Ben Bernanke, to guard the matches. These actions by President Peacock show Americans, and the world that he is not Harry Truman, nor Franklin D. Roosevelt during the nation’s most critical, and dangerous times.

Since last year, and on into this current administration the focus has been on rescuing the greedy bankers who stole the economy from everyone else, and various bankruptcies that ensued the nation while sucking out of the treasury $14 trillion, as the real economy was engulfed by an economic firestorm. Beginning in 1999, as the Clinton administration waned furthering the Royal Scam upon the country with the construction of the Future Commodities Modernization Act of 1999, making it illegal to regulate the private investment scam artists and the shadow banking industry located within every major crime syndicate financial bank, which was signed into law by the administration of Little Boy Bush, which allowed for a massive financial heist of America’s middle class wealth concentrating it within the confines of our corrupt Wall Street institutions and then, grabbed by the top executives running those companies. And, of course, there was the shelving of the Glass-Steagall Act, as well, no longer placing a firewall between savings banks and the financial casino-like institutions, such as Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers.

As the Wall Street pyromaniacs began to experience the rapid fire storm sweeping subprime mortgages, 401Ks, foreclosures, unemployment statistics, then on into the prime mortgage market, pension funds, personal portfolios, and more, these banksta gangstas sitting in the executive suites of the biggest financial institutions were still buying their second and third homes, luxury cars, yachts, airplanes, condominiums, collectible art, country club memberships, and stashing their liquid wealth into accounts opened in places like the Cayman Islands, and other tax haven hideaways.

As Pam Martens tells us Sandy Weill, for example, the former CEO and chairman of Citigroup, walked away from his job with $1 billion in ill-gotten gain. What did he actually create at Citi? Did he create a company with sustainability, job security, or tangible products, like shampoo, or dog food? No! He walked away from a burned out company that he set on fire through “creative” gambling securities scams, through the hocus pocus of imaginative and make-believe AAA rating agencies, credit default swaps, and other bogus scams.

And now, because of the erosion of the Glass-Steagall Act, defining the boundaries between banks and financial institutions, the data released from the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation (FDIC), on March 31, 2009 revealed “there are 8,246 FDIC insured institutions with total assets of $13.5 Trillion and domestic deposits of $7.5 Trillion. Four institutions, Bank of America Corporation, JPMorgan Chase and Co., Wells Fargo and Co. and Citgroup Inc., four institutions out of 8,246, control 35% of all the insured domestic deposits and 46% of the assets according to the March 31, 2009 figures from the FDIC.”

Ms. Martens went on to report that Chairman Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve has not done anything to reduce this massive concentration of wealth into the hands of a very small portion of the population, and the collusion to corral more government funds to stuff in safety deposit boxes and fatten up balance sheets, since the crisis began, but has encouraged this concentration allowing these monopoly banks to absorb their financially wounded competitors at Blue Light Special prices. Such actions create even bigger “too-big-to-fail” behemoths that when found dying in their insolvency holes drowning in stale champagne, will ask Congress twice over for trillions more treasury minted dollars calling out once more that the sky will turn black, and the country will face mortal danger if they are not rescued again.

The Wall-Street taxpayer bail-out amounting to $14 trillion far exceeds the mere $500 billion offered up to Main Street’s real economy. The Wall-Street bail-out is 25 times bigger than the Main Street offering. Now, had this been reversed, we would be seeing a resurgence of new manufacturing jobs sweeping the work force, no doubt, contributing to a Green economy that would be exportable reducing the trade deficit, stimulating consumer spending, stabilizing the housing market, and replenishing the lost retirement dollars. But, President Peacock, and his flock of financial fundies have not moved toward such sensible solutions.

Part of the national bail-out is the U.S. government’s 60% investment in General Motors, which according to Robert Reich, the nation’s 22nd Secretary of Labor and professor at the University of California-Berkley, GM will eventually be no more. The only reason for the $60 billion rescue package is “designed to give the economy time to reduce the social costs of the blow” when its assets eventually get sold off and the company no longer exists. Dr. Reich went on to say that the $60 billion would have been better spent had it been allocated to retrain auto workers, as well as to give them extended unemployment insurance as they become retrained for other jobs.

As we recall, GM was able to retool during the build up to World War II in order to manufacture tanks and other war machines, therefore, why cannot GM retool to manufacture high-speed rail cars for the development of intra-city transportation corridors? Or, electric cars, such as the Aptera. But, President Peacock has stated that we, the investors who now own controlling interest in GM will say nothing about the products this dying automaker will manufacture. It appears that the GM brand name will eventually be sold to China, as has gone the Hummer.

Dr. Reich wrote that GM was once the nation’s number one private employer with strong middle class jobs paying $60 per hour to workers not requiring a college education. Today, Wal-Mart has replaced GM with their $10 per hour jobs. This is part of the new American paradigm shift the nation has been willing to accept over the last 30 years. Sit down, hold on, and shut up seems to be the mantra of Wall-Street to Main Street.

The real economy jobs are disappearing. Credit is not flowing. Borrowing has narrowed. The economy has contracted more than 6% average annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2008, and first quarter of 2009. From December 2007 through April 2009, the economy has burned up 6 million jobs. Dr. Morici has estimated that the economy will likely have lost more than 8 million jobs as the recession wanes.

The editor note on the website layoffdaily.com has calculated that “we would need 48 straight months (4 years) of 350,000 jobs added a month to reach January 2008 employment levels [which had been 4.9% and considered full employment]. Keep in mind that to get there, we need every last one of these rosy projections to happen [create 7 million jobs to get back to 4.9%, adding 137,000 new jobs to keep up with the pace of working-age population growth], plus a sustained job growth rate unseen in our lifetime, plus no worsening or new financial crises, no additional sector collapses, no double dip recession, and no black swans.” Wow! Now that is a tall order for President Peacock!

According to Tyler Durden of zerohedge.blogspot.com, it seems that credit default swaps, those bets that specific stocks will drop in value, continue to be purchased in the billions of dollars every month in nearly every sector. He wrote that the “net notional value change [with JPMorgan] was an almost record $2.1 billion in the name alone (on $52.1 billion in gross) on a ridiculous amount of contracts.” The gambling continues. The real economy suffers. And, Ben Bernanke, Timmy Geithner, President Peacock and Congress sit on the sidelines doing nothing to control such stuff.

Bernanke had spoken about keeping mortgage interest rates down in order to encourage home buying, but he has been buying up mortgage backed securities, and treasury issues that he has been printing up, which has driven up mortgage interest rates, and not dropped them. It just seems Bernanke has been saying one thing to the homebuilders but doing another to sabotage their survival.

There is good reason to be disappointed in President Obama. What he has done is just not good enough. It seems he was promising us more, but it appears we misunderstood those great speeches he gave us. The motto, “Change We Can Believe In” was just part of a darn good speech.

Thanks for reading, Jerry