Obama's Austerity: We should have seen this coming, No?

Obama's Big Payback to Wall Street

The Worst Deal in American History?

By MIKE WHITNEY

Here's a clip from a speech Obama gave in November 2008, before he even took office, and long before the budget deficits had become a problem:

"Our economy is trapped in a vicious cycle: the turmoil on Wall Street means a new round of belt-tightening for families and businesses on Main Street ....we'll have to scour our federal budget, line-by-line, and make meaningful cuts and sacrifices as well."

Huh? You mean Obama was prattling the right-wing mantra before he ever set foot in the Oval Office?

Uh huh; which explains why he picked the two losers most responsible for the Crash of '08 to lead his economics team; Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner. Obama devotees shrugged off the appointments as a rookie error unwilling to breach any criticism of the Dear Leader. Even now, they cry "Foul", claiming Obama was either hoodwinked or --get this--a "poor negotiator".

Get real. Obama is as far right as you can get without donning a Tricorn hat and joining a militia. Don't believe it?

Here's an excerpt from his book Audacity of Hope where he gushingly praises his boyhood hero, Ronald Reagan:

"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, and certainly liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies tilted heavily toward economic elites, with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties while unions were busted and the income for the average working stiff flatlined.

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). (Excerpt from, Christopher Caldwell, What Obama Owes to Reagan, Daily Kos)

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney08012011.html