You might say that (with a tip o'teh tinfoil to Lambert & cd again).
Nignag's take on this?
...“It could have been worse” is the only argument the Obama administration can make heading into the fall election campaign, but it is doubtful that the millions of workers who have lost their jobs, health insurance and homes over the past two years draw any comfort from it. Obama’s statement combined this minimizing of the crisis with a concluding declaration:For all of our challenges, I continue to be inspired by the dedication and optimism of US workers, and I am confident that we will emerge from this storm with a stronger economy.
This rhetorical flourish might be translated as follows: As the chief political representative of US capitalism, I am amazed that there has not yet been a mass upheaval among US workers against both my government and the financial aristocracy it serves. I hope to be able to delude working people with rhetoric about “hope” and “change” for at least a few more years. While arrogantly dismissing the plight of tens of millions of poverty-stricken USAians in a brief written statement, Obama devoted most of his working day to meeting with two groups of corporate CEOs: the President’s Export Council, which seeks to promote the competitiveness of US industries by cutting their costs, including labor costs; and leaders of 100 of the biggest corporations, who gathered to insure that the administration’s education policy is aligned with the needs of the corporate US.
You know, the
Speaking of the bank$ters, Glen Ford asks the One what are these bootstraps of which he speaks?
...The two devastating recessions of the last decade have had catastrophic effects on Black economic prospects. Yet, despite the monstrous setbacks of recent years and the general failure to bridge the racial wage and wealth gap over the last three decades, there still exists a strong current of Black political thought that insists African Americans can pull themselves and the rest of the race up by their financial bootstraps, through hard work and pooling of collective resources. Some of these arguments are unashamedly Black capitalist; others preach a brand of communal partnerships among Black entrepreneurs and consumers that attempts to make the entire Black community a kind of capitalist engine of self-help. What binds the variations on the "bootstrap" theme together, is an essential refusal to challenge the capitalist system. The belief is that Black "buying power" or race-based investment schemes will allow Black folks to rise from the bottom of the American economic barrel.
Implicit in this line of thinking is the notion that Blacks are at the bottom because they have not been trying hard enough to move up - which is also the assumption of white racists, whether they call themselves conservatives or liberals. The most fatal flaw in the Black capitalist world view is the assumption that Black people actually have the wealth and discretionary income to build an internal economy that could insulate them from the general capitalist crisis. We know different, because all the data tell us that Black household income is stuck at the same level relative to whites as back in 1979, and Black comparative wealth was steadily eroding even before the last decade's recessions. And we know that Black wealth has been further diminished relative to whites in the ongoing housing meltdown, in which Blacks are twice as likely to face foreclosure. And we know that Blacks, a majority of whom are renters, bear the brunt of the dislocations caused by rampant gentrification, which in some urban areas forces families to spend more than half their income on rent.
Simply put, there ain't no damn money for these bootstrap capitalism dreams, and there never was. There was never the possibility of building a Black General Motors - and now General Motors requires billions of dollars in federal infusions to survive...
Mr. Ford, it's not just poor blacks. It's the majority of the population, of all colors, that's fed this tripe.
Glen Ford also has some choice things to say about Obama's new infrastructure stimulus plans:
Very late in the game, President Obama unveils his version of an industrial policy for America. But it turns out that under his "infrastructure bank" scheme "the same Wall Street players that have relentlessly and methodically de-industrialized the United States for the past 30 years, would direct the economic makeover of the country, all the while earning interest on the borrowed funds."
...The president's proposed bank is yet another ploy to create a new windfall for the private bankers on Wall Street. When hundreds of thousands gather on the Washington Mall for the NAACP's and organized labor's rally for jobs on October 2, the Obama administration's mouthpieces will try to fire up the crowd by invoking the president's plans for a National Infrastructure Bank. The public-private scheme was announced so late in the political season, it appears more like a last-minute sop to panicky congressional Democrats desperate to show that their president and his party are good for something besides funneling $12 to $14 trillion to Wall Street - the biggest transfer of wealth of all time, for which Obama will go down in history.
The so-called infrastructure bank masquerades as the beginning of an industrial policy to reverse the export of jobs from the United States. Obama is spinning the scheme as his variation on Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, when the federal government directly created millions of jobs and invested public monies in a vast, new infrastructure, much of which we are still using, today. But in reality, the president's proposed bank bears no resemblance to the New Deal of the 1930s.
Rather, it is yet another ploy to create a new windfall for the private bankers on Wall Street - a public-private scam. The scheme would transfer billions in public funds to a new banking entity, to attract the mega-bankers, whose investments would be guaranteed by the U.S. government. The Obama bank would then lend these monies to selected projects, overseen by a board heavily weighted with representatives of those same Wall Street firms and their corporate allies.
Essentially, the same Wall Street players that have relentlessly and methodically de-industrialized the United States for the past 30 years, would direct the economic makeover of the country, all the while earning interest on the borrowed funds. That's not a New Deal, that's a license for yet more no-risk self-dealing by Wall Street, guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the United States. It is a travesty and a swindle.
The moneyed classes refuse to invest in any economic and social development unless they are positioned in the middle of the money stream. But, that's what you get when finance capital has a lock on the political and economic process; nothing emerges except that which expands the power of capital.
At this stage in the decline of capitalism, the moneyed classes refuse to invest in any economic and social development unless they are positioned in the middle of the money stream, to siphon off the greater part for themselves, at no risk to themselves, and with ultimate control over the shape of the project. They will not support education unless they own a profitable piece of it, through hedge fund-backed charter school companies and other privatization schemes. They will not allow a revamping of health care unless their profits and commanding position in the system are preserved. They will not lift a finger to slow the process of global warming, unless creating a green economy dumps a forest of green on their balance sheets. And they will certainly not permit any combination of politicians funded by them - as is the Obama wing of the Democratic Party - to even attempt a modest re-industrialization of the United States unless they are allowed to empty the U.S. Treasury of every available public dollar.
Nearing the end of the second half of his term, President Obama finally - finally! - comes up with a plan flavored with just a whiff of the New Deal. But it's just another Wall Street concoction.
And it's not even empty calories. It's pure fat for the bank$ters, and Kool-Aide for the Democratic voters.
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