Wouldn't it be nice if one day the Obama Administration came up with a change, an innovative reform for the financial system that made us sit back and say, "Wow, that's great! That's exactly what we have been looking for."
So far it has been one misstep, one fumble, one tired old Henny Youngman routine after another. The Clinton Administration retread meets the road, and falls apart.
Things went badly beginning with the appointment of Larry Summers as key economic advisor.
Larry was one of the three man miracle team of Greenspan, Rubin and Summers that turned the Asian monetary crisis into the tech bubble after a smoke and mirrors economic recovery while the industrial base of the US continued to slide into the Pacific.
We have seen nothing that speaks of the promise that we felt when America said "enough" and voted for a change in the fall of 2008.
And after the Summers disappointment we received the the Rubin protege, Tim Geithner, with the thinnest of financial backgrounds, who while at the NY Fed helped to help transform the housing bubble collapse into the bailout bust.
His position at Treasury is such an obvious, glaring mismatch that he cannot even staff key jobs in his own department. Who would want to work under such an obvious, embarrassing failure?
This is not a poor performance. This is an abject, incompetent inability to address the most critical issue facing this country.
This is Obama's Iraq: a morass of crippling failure brought on by horrible advice from key advisors with their own agendas.
President Obama throws rhetoric at the problem from a distance, like he is still campaigning against something. He leaves the impression of a more articulate Bush, inspiring no lasting confidence, giving no impression that he is in charge, on top of the situation, in control with a well thought out plan. He can make you feel good while he is speaking, then reality sets in and you realize that there is nothing there. Where are the management skills to back up the rhetoric?
Don't get us wrong. This is still early in the game. But the Democrats are losing the early rounds, as the situation grows more dire.
Well, Mr. Obama, you are President now, and even though you have only a short time in the office, so far you have shown us nothing. Your shepherding of a stimulus bill through the Congress was a nightmare, made worse by Nancy Pelosi who is a mediocre House Speaker at best, but appears a dynamo in comparison to Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Tired old solutions, inbred beltway thinking, old boy insider dealing.
Embarrassing. Unworthy. Amateurish. Pathetic.
You are failing, and we see it, and the anger, and sense of quiet panic, is building.
Time to get serious, to get it together. Time to step up to the job and take command. Time to show us your best stuff, find the levers, roll up your sleeves, and step down from the pulpit.
“Thus, it should be understood that when pro-US figures use the term, 'rules-based international order,' they are not referring to anything analogous to the rule of law. Quite the opposite, they are using Orwellian language to describe a system in which essentially no rules can be established and/or observed, given that the dominant state has the prerogative to violate and/or rewrite “rules” at its whim.” Aaron Good, American Exception
