Is Obama’s administration only a presidential brand change?

The Obama Crossroads: Neo-Liberal Coup or Responsible Government

by Prof. John McMurtry

Global Research, February 1, 2009

Find full article here, see excerpts below:

When the U.S. Treasury gave away $700 billion to Wall Street banks with no strings attached in October of 2008, the Obama team gave a green light.

Obama’s new U.S. Treasury Secretary is Tim Geithner, a former chief deputy of his Democrat predecessors at Treasury - Robert Rubin (who presided in the first Clinton government and later Citigroup over the “new financial instruments” that have subsequently wrecked the U.S. and world economy), and Larry Summers (who as Secretary of the Treasury in 1999 tore down barriers between commercial and investment banks in the deregulation frenzy that set up the Wall Street crash).

Former Federal Reserve chief, Allen Greenspan, observes that “sovereign credit and guarantees put in place during the crisis [i.e., new government money to private banks] is now estimated at 7 trillion”. Yet after 1.5 trillion U.S. public dollars thrown at the Wall Street hole, not one homeowner has been relieved of bankruptcy proceedings, the banks do not lend to productive enterprises or even themselves, and no-one tells anyone in America what’s been done with all the public money.

In fact, the only democratically accountable and efficient banking system is one in which skyrocketing non-productive costs, unaccountable debt creations and pyramid schemes are made impossible inside the law. Yet most are enslaved to a false double dogma - first, that unaccountable big banks creating compound-interest debts for everyone including governments are economically necessary; and, second, that they must be left free to leverage, mix and repackage debt assets as they please without the money to back the credit or capital they allocate. Statesmen since Thomas Jefferson have not been so foolish. “Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies”, Jefferson pragmatically observed.

Important! Do not confuse the author’s use of the term neo-liberalism with liberal Democrats. According to Wikipedia: “The central principle of neoliberal policy is untrammeled free markets and free trade.”