Source: commondreams.org
by Robert Freeman
Barack Obama was used. Of course, he knew he was being used when he made the deal. But what he didn’t know was how quickly he would be used up. Now he has to face two years of humiliation knowing that he betrayed the people and the country he claimed to champion – and knowing that everyone else knows it as well – but also knowing that he’s gotten what’s coming to him.
Obama made a deal to get the job in the first place. The deal was that he would carry on with Bush’s bailout of the banks, with Bush’s two wars, with Bush’s suppression of civil liberties, that he wouldn’t prosecute or even investigate any of the enormous fraud that had brought down the country, or the lies that had railroaded it into war.
Even before he took office, he began fulfilling his end of the bargain. He appointed Larry Summers head of the National Economic Council. It was Summers, more than any other person, who was responsible for dismantling the Glass-Steagall regulations that had acted as a firebreak against banks looting the country since the Great Depression. Summers had made millions consulting for hedge funds before taking the office.
Obama appointed Timothy Geithner Secretary of the Treasury. Geithner had been head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, another central actor in the hear-no-evil-see-no-evil-speak-no-evil dereliction that passed for financial oversight in the Bush administration. He had been a major architect under Bush of the financial bailout that passed trillions of dollars to his former banking cohorts on the pretext of saving the system.
Read full article… https://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/07