Virgil
09-19-2008, 01:42 PM
This is in the A&E forum both because of its broadness as an editorial and secondly because of a desire to present the author as an author. SEP below stands for Socialist Equity Party.
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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/obam-s19.shtml
Obama’s response to financial meltdown: Deception and subservience to Wall Street
By Bill Van Auken, SEP vice presidential candidate
19 September 2008
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
As hundreds of millions of people in the US and around the world confront the onset of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with all of its implications for their jobs, livelihoods and the future of their children, the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate Barack Obama have seized upon Wall Street’s implosion as a means of reinvigorating their faltering campaign.
Obama has delivered a series of speeches and aired a new campaign ad blaming the economic meltdown on “bad decisions made in favor of big corporate special interests instead of America’s working families.”
The Democratic candidate has made the most of his Republican rival John McCain’s bald statement Monday—in the wake of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the forced sale of Merrill Lynch and the free-fall of stock prices on Wall Street—that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
As the absurdity of these remarks became clear, the McCain campaign shifted gears, adopting an equally absurd pretense of anti-Wall Street populism. By Wednesday, speaking to employees at the General Motors plant in Lake Orion, Michigan, McCain was denouncing Wall Street’s “casino culture” and declaring: “We are going to fight the special interests and corruption in Washington. We are going to fight the greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street.” By Thursday, he was calling for the firing of the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission for having “betrayed the public trust.”
Obama mocked McCain’s phony populist rhetoric, while calling attention to the dominance of corporate lobbyists over his campaign and his close ties to the right-wing former Republican senator and architect of key financial deregulation legislation, Phil Gramm.
“At this rate, by the end of the week John McCain will be telling us how he and Phil Gramm and the seven lobbyists are planning to storm the Treasury Department with torches and pitchforks,” said the Democratic candidate.
The sarcasm was apt, but the reality is that it cuts both ways.
If the cataclysmic events in the financial markets over the past week have revealed anything, it is the complete subservience of every branch of the US government and both major political parties to the banks and the biggest capitalist interests. Behind the façade of American democracy lies a dictatorship of finance capital that, under conditions of crisis, exerts its power directly and nakedly.
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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/obam-s19.shtml
Obama’s response to financial meltdown: Deception and subservience to Wall Street
By Bill Van Auken, SEP vice presidential candidate
19 September 2008
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
As hundreds of millions of people in the US and around the world confront the onset of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with all of its implications for their jobs, livelihoods and the future of their children, the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate Barack Obama have seized upon Wall Street’s implosion as a means of reinvigorating their faltering campaign.
Obama has delivered a series of speeches and aired a new campaign ad blaming the economic meltdown on “bad decisions made in favor of big corporate special interests instead of America’s working families.”
The Democratic candidate has made the most of his Republican rival John McCain’s bald statement Monday—in the wake of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the forced sale of Merrill Lynch and the free-fall of stock prices on Wall Street—that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
As the absurdity of these remarks became clear, the McCain campaign shifted gears, adopting an equally absurd pretense of anti-Wall Street populism. By Wednesday, speaking to employees at the General Motors plant in Lake Orion, Michigan, McCain was denouncing Wall Street’s “casino culture” and declaring: “We are going to fight the special interests and corruption in Washington. We are going to fight the greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street.” By Thursday, he was calling for the firing of the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission for having “betrayed the public trust.”
Obama mocked McCain’s phony populist rhetoric, while calling attention to the dominance of corporate lobbyists over his campaign and his close ties to the right-wing former Republican senator and architect of key financial deregulation legislation, Phil Gramm.
“At this rate, by the end of the week John McCain will be telling us how he and Phil Gramm and the seven lobbyists are planning to storm the Treasury Department with torches and pitchforks,” said the Democratic candidate.
The sarcasm was apt, but the reality is that it cuts both ways.
If the cataclysmic events in the financial markets over the past week have revealed anything, it is the complete subservience of every branch of the US government and both major political parties to the banks and the biggest capitalist interests. Behind the façade of American democracy lies a dictatorship of finance capital that, under conditions of crisis, exerts its power directly and nakedly.
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