The Quiet Coup and other things

Wow, has it really been 2 months since I posted anything? Some of it is, of course, the same inertia that has afflicted a sizable number of liberals since election day 2008. I was laughing the other day at an ad from a purveyor of progressive bumper stickers and other paraphernalia, facetiously (or not) begging people to buy from him and help shake the sales slump he's been suffering since the election. On a more somber note, progressive talk radio has evaporated from the south Florida airways.

Complacency? No. Never that. We're still in Iraq; we're killing even more innocents in Afghanistan. We are, no doubt, the Taliban's best recruiting tool, not only there, but in Pakistan, too. The economy is still stuttering, and all anyone wants to do is evaluate recovery by Wall Street! Congress, no matter the Democratic majority, is still the private property of lobbyists.

Hey, President Obama - I'M PISSED!!!!!!! I worked my ass off to win you Florida and you gave me Timothy Geithner, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers! Not to mention Robert Gates.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ...

Maybe that should have been the title of this post ...

It wasn't until I read an article in the Atlantic by Simon Johnson that I began to understand the pathology of Obama's thrall with Wall Street. Johnson is a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management and the former head economist (2006-2007) for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Just so you know that we're not talking about some bandana-wearing anarchist. His article is titled "The Quiet Coup," and it is hands down the best piece of analysis that I have read concerning the strange, sorry state in which our nation has found itself.

From the article's lead in:
"The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time."

Read it, and weep. Then send President Change an email and tell him to do the same.