<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><em><strong><font color="#000000" size="+1" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Trying to Revive the Bubble Economy: </font></strong></em>
<h1><strong><font color="#990000" size="+2" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Obama's Awful Financial Recovery Plan</font></strong></h1>
<p><font size="+1" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><strong>By MICHAEL HUDSON</strong></font></p>
<p><em>This is a major expansion of Dr Hudson’s piece that ran for some hours on yesterday’s site. AC/JSC</em></p>
<p>Martin Wolf started off his <em>Financial Times</em>
column for February 11 with the bold question: “Has Barack Obama’s
presidency already failed?” The stock market had a similar opinion,
plunging 382 points. Having promised “change,” Mr. Obama is giving us
more Clinton-Bush via Robert Rubin’s protégé, Tim Geithner. Tuesday’s
$2.5 trillion Financial Stabilization Plan to re-inflate the Bubble
Economy is basically an extension of the Bush-Paulson giveaway – yet
more Rubinomics for financial insiders in the emerging Wall Street
trusts. The financial system is to be concentrated into a cartel of
just a few giant conglomerates to act as the economy’s central planners
and resource allocators. This makes banks the big winners in the game
of “chicken” they’ve been playing with Washington, a shakedown holding
the economy hostage. “Give us what we want or we’ll plunge the economy
into financial crisis.” Washington has given them $9 trillion so far,
with promises now of another $2 trillion– and still counting.</p><p><br></p>
<p>A
true reform – one designed to undo the systemic market distortions that
led to the real estate bubble – would have set out to reverse the
Clinton-Rubin repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act so as to prevent the
corrupting conflicts of interest that have resulted in vertical trusts
such as Citibank and Bank of America/Countrywide/Merrill Lynch. By
unleashing these conglomerate <em>grupos</em> (to use the term
popularized under Pinochet with Chicago Boy direction – a dress
rehearsal of the mass financial bankruptcies they caused in Chile by
the end of the 1970s) the Clinton administration enabled banks to merge
with junk mortgage companies, junk-money managers, fictitious property
appraisal companies, and law-evasion firms all designed to package
debts to investors who trusted them enough to let them rake off enough
commissions and capital gains to make their managers the world’s
highest-paid economic planners.</p><br>http://counterpunch.org/hudson02122009.html<br><br><br><div id="RTEContent"><div id="RTEContent"><div><strong> </strong><em></em><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Stop</span> thinking like an American, <br>Start thinking about humanity!<br></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 127, 64); font-weight: bold;"></span></div></div></div></td></tr></table><br>