Obama's Stimulus Package: Pissing into the Wind
Source: Obama's economic plan has the goal of “saving or creating” 2.5 million jobs in 2009 and 2010. It's a measure that has already been outstripped by events.The deepening crisis of American and world capitalism could destroy that many US jobs in the next six to nine months alone.
Obama again sought to dampen expectations that the new administration would be able to reverse the economic slide quickly, saying, “It’s likely to get worse before it gets better.”
While expressing verbal sympathy for the struggles of working class Americans who face lost jobs, inadequate paychecks and the disappearance of pensions and college savings, Obama offered nothing in the way of concrete assistance.
His concluding remarks were perhaps the most significant. Hailing what he called “the American dream,” he declared, “It has thrived because in our darkest hours we have risen above the smallness of our divisions to forge a path towards a new and brighter day. We have acted boldly, bravely, and above all, together.”
The gauzy, patriotic rhetoric conceals a lie. The economic and class divisions in the United States are not small; they are the largest and widest in American history.
Never has such a tiny minority of the population monopolized such a huge proportion of overall wealth, to the detriment of the vast majority.
As for the demand that action be taken “above all, together,” it means that the financial aristocracy, which is responsible for the crisis, should not be compelled to pay for it. Instead, the burden will be placed on the backs of “all,” i.e., on working people.
Top adviser David Axelrod, appearing on two Sunday television interview programs, did not contradict reports that Obama would instead allow the Bush tax cuts to continue for another two years, when they are scheduled to expire.
Another Obama adviser, William Daley, former Clinton commerce secretary, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that a continuation of the tax cut for those making over $250,000 a year until its scheduled expiration at the end of 2010 now “looks more likely than not.”
Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, appearing on the CBS program “Face the Nation,” embraced the suggestion that the stimulus package could be as high as $700 billion, including tax cuts for low- and middle-income families, infrastructure spending, expanded unemployment benefits and tax credits for business.
This extreme escalation in the price tag is a response to the expanding scale of the financial crisis and its impact on the wider economy.
Obama also announced his choices for the top economic positions in the new administration. The leading figures are Timothy Geithner, current president of the New York Federal Reserve, for treasury secretary and former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers as top economic policy coordinator at the White House.
Both men are longtime fiscal crisis managers for American capitalism, going back to the Mexican peso crisis of 1995-96 and the Asian crisis of 1997-98. Geithner has been one of the three top officials handling the current Wall Street meltdown.
he has worked hand-in-hand with the current treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Summers is reportedly Obama’s choice to replace Bernanke when his term expires later in 2009.
The right-wing character of these personnel decisions has been widely noted in the media.
As David Sanger of the New York Times observed Sunday, “President-Elect Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination with the enthusiastic support of the left wing of his party, fueled by his vehement opposition to the decision to invade Iraq and by one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate.
Now, his reported selections for two of the major positions in his cabinet-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and Timothy F. Geithner as secretary of the treasury-suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party, surrounding himself with pragmatists rather than ideologues.”
In other words, these selections demonstrate that Obama will pursue economic policies determined by the same class interests upheld by his Republican predecessor.
The primary concern will be the defense of the financial system—i.e., the accumulated wealth of the financial aristocracy, embodied in the giant banks, hedge funds and other huge financial institutions, whose parasitic and speculative operations precipitated the current crisis. More...