From Wall Street to the White House
Posted by Andrew Jackson under banks, financial regulation, US.
January 9th, 2011
Comments: 2
Sometimes the crudest forms of Marxist analysis of the relationship between class and politics make the most sense.
Read this scorching commentary by Simon Johnson – the former IMF Chief Economist turned ubercritic of the power of the big banks - on the appointment of a senior Wall Street figure, Bill Daley from Morgan Stanley, as President Obama’s new chief of staff. This cements already close relations between Obama’s economic team and Wall Street, and signals a further turn to the right.
Daley was on the executive committee of Morgan Stanley, in charge of “corporate responsibility.” He was formerly Secretary of Commerce in the second Clinton Administration. He was an opponent of Obama’s health care reform and financial regulation legislation, and his new appointment has been welcomed by the US Chamber of Commerce.
Read and weep.
“Let’s be honest. With the appointment of Bill Daley, the big banks have won completely this round of boom-bust-bailout. The risk inherent to our financial system is now higher than it was in the early/mid-2000s. We are set up for another illusory financial expansion and another debilitating crisis.”
Bill Daley will get it done.
(By the way, Johnson and Kwak’s excellent book, Thirteen Bankers, is now out in paperback.)
Comments
Comment from Paul tulloch
Time: January 9, 2011, 12:04 pm
Simon has been reading my mind! Or more likely, the left.
The key point- with the de-industrialization, in terms of employment, it will be extremely difficult to continue on with the financialization of the economy at a pace that will be adequate to keep the markets inflated with the corrupted fictitious wealth generating tools that have been assembled. But it seems that is the way forward, and this appointment was the grand finale of Obama’s embracing of the right. It will be the undoing if america, just wait, the world will no longer allow the global surplus to be controlled and claimed by an elite financial group parading as soothsayers. To me it is the beginning of obama’s end.
A grand mistake.
Comment from Travis Fast
Time: January 9, 2011, 8:37 pm
Yah but Marx said the state was nothing other than the executive committee for the *entire* bourgeoisie. What a hopeless optimist.
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