Obama's Secret Plan
by Charles Hugh Smith

snip

Does anyone seriously believe that a new President could dent the vast political power of the Financial Aristocracy with a Jimmy Stewart-like speech excoriating the bankers and their minions for gutting the U.S. economy? The chances of that having any effect are zero.

How about tightening regulations? And what happens when lapdogs in Congress quickly rush to gut the regulations or the regulatory forces supposedly empowered to enforce them? If you doubt the power of bankers, please look at what has happened to attempts to limit the most egregious excesses of credit card usury and outrageous junk fees: they're thwarted or watered down every time.

Does anyone seriously believe an obstructionist opposition which supported Bush's giveaways and staggering deficits for eight long years has any credibility? The moment to do something about deficits was 2003, and the moment to vote down bailouts was last Fall (hmm, now there's an appropriate season) when the TARP debacle was shoved down the nation's throat by the Financial Aristocracy.

Does anyone seriously believe the Democrats who cheerily absorbed millions in donations from scalawags and crooks in Fannie Mae, Goldman Sachs et al. while obstructing regulations which might have limited the damage have a lick of credibility? To be a partisan in this age is to be either blind or brainwashed.

more...

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr09/obamas-secret-plan04-09.html

I would say his theory is our last chance at "hope".

Obama's Secret Plan
by Charles Hugh Smith

snip

Does anyone seriously believe that a new President could dent the vast political power of the Financial Aristocracy with a Jimmy Stewart-like speech excoriating the bankers and their minions for gutting the U.S. economy? The chances of that having any effect are zero.

How about tightening regulations? And what happens when lapdogs in Congress quickly rush to gut the regulations or the regulatory forces supposedly empowered to enforce them? If you doubt the power of bankers, please look at what has happened to attempts to limit the most egregious excesses of credit card usury and outrageous junk fees: they're thwarted or watered down every time.

Does anyone seriously believe an obstructionist opposition which supported Bush's giveaways and staggering deficits for eight long years has any credibility? The moment to do something about deficits was 2003, and the moment to vote down bailouts was last Fall (hmm, now there's an appropriate season) when the TARP debacle was shoved down the nation's throat by the Financial Aristocracy.

Does anyone seriously believe the Democrats who cheerily absorbed millions in donations from scalawags and crooks in Fannie Mae, Goldman Sachs et al. while obstructing regulations which might have limited the damage have a lick of credibility? To be a partisan in this age is to be either blind or brainwashed.

more...

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr09/obamas-secret-plan04-09.html

I would say his theory is our last chance at "hope".

because I am, Obama will prove to be on the side that financed him. Nothing will change. :(

<snip>

If you set out to gut the political power of the banker/financial Plutocracy which holds Congress on a tight leash, this is the only way to do so: goad the public to rise up with such fury that they cannot be denied, lest every politico who seeks to protect the status quo be swept aside in the next election, regardless of party, age, religion or any other bastion of "voter support" they were counting on to save their bacon from an aroused public's righteous wrath.

If Obama had refused to support the bailout, the screams that he was "destroying the foundation of the U.S. economy and our way of life" would have been ceaseless and deafening, for a stunned and stupefied public had failed to process what was actually happening beneath the MSM propaganda about "saving the banking system to save the nation."

Obama can now say, "I did everything you wanted." Is it a carefully craft Secret Plan or merely the fumbling results of a status quo politico? Either way, it's brilliant because it's the only possible pathway to a future not dominated by trickery, fraud, collusion, obscurity, propaganda and the looting of what's left of the U.S. Treasury and economy.

Can abject, impoverished debt-serfs distracted by hundreds of channels of idiotbox TV, iPods, American Idle, oops, I mean Idol (now there's a Master's Thesis topic for ya), "professional sports" (a.k.a. gladiators and circuses) and all the other avenues of marketing which are sold as "entertainment" rather than what they really are, propaganda and distraction-- can a nation of debt-serfs actually awaken from their "entertainment" stupor long enough to register outrage at the looting of their nation and liberties by a small Plutocracy?

We shall see. If the looting which is finally sinking through the endless layers of propaganda doesn't spark a bloodless revolution demanding real change in who actually runs the nation's policies, money and regulatory structures, then nothing will.

Is there even a shred of evidence that Obama might have thought this out one layer deeper than 99.999% of the bankers, critics, pundits and opponents? perhaps one: Paul Volker. Volker--remember him? Where has he been? Trussed up and gagged in some Treasury basement? He'd slipped from the media radar until very recently, when he somehow escaped from the duct tape and Treasury guards and had the audacity to stand up and call inflation targets pure theft.

Whew. Was that a breath of fresh air or what? I see two possibilities: either Obama really is just another standard-issue tool of the Financial Plutocracy, and Volker resigns in disgust within a year to protect what's left of his once-sterling reputation, or Obama is giving the Banking Plutocracy all the rope it needs to hang itself. In that case Volker is the "Trojan Horse" in the system, the one who will emerge after the extremes have finally goaded the public to an anger which cannot be diverted by propaganda and "entertainments."

So watch Volker. If he resigns, then Obama truly believed the absurdity that bailing out the bankers and enabling their continued looting of the nation is "the fix we need." If Volker stays, even in the shadows, there may be more intelligence afoot in our leadership than has yet been revealed.

Cynicism and optimism.

The optimist in me wants to believe Obama has a progressive agenda, it's just TPTB that prevents him from reflecting that completely in his policies.

The cynic in me sees two possibilities: that he is blinded by the power of the system and will, as you say, stay on the side that financed him, or that he keeps his true agenda in check until the status quo becomes so abhorrent that he has to bite the hand that feeds him.

I am cynical about the second possibility creating real change because of something Bill Maher said, "The only two guys who ever went up against people who gave them money, Huey Long, Standard Oil, and John F. Kennedy with the Mob, and they both got shot. Everybody else does what they're told."

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0008/04/lkl.02.html

You've got to be kidding. Volcher is being kept in waiting for the collapse of the currency. When his ideas are in vogue, the economy will go into deep, deep, deep freeze. This is a replay of the great depression. Things are very, very bad right now. But they will get worse. When Volcher gets airtime, you'll know the bell is tolling.