Obama does not deserve the benefit of a reputation championing the most common American who merely lacks a strong spine to carry out virtuous actions.
Great point. I agree. He's got more power than any man on this earth, and yet he whines about not being able to get anything done.
But he's successfully done a lot, and all of it bad. He's bailed out the banks at taxpayers expense, pumped up the stock market and other non-productive investment vehicles at the taxpayers' expense, worsened the buying power of the majority of Americans by supporting financial industry bailouts (and renominating Bernanke), suppressed American wages by promoting more outsourcing of jobs thru even more free trade agreements (unlike his campaign promises), has forced Americans to subsidize health insurance companies by spinelessly backing the insurance companies' request for a mandate (despite his phony campaign promises not to), and further eroded civil liberties by reducing 4th Amendment protections even more than Bush had.
My best summary is that Obama is a dishonest, cowardly, spineless, plutocratic, oligopoly-promoting slimeball.
I like the disparaging adjectives ...
Most all the world's very different 'political systems' have piled up historically high levels of debt to GDP and hidden tremendously more 'must pay' obligations off the books as learned from Enron such as unfunded obligations to pay health care benefits in most US states, etc.
Despite their 'political systems' appearing to be different, almost all have resulted in impossible to perform promises to pay debts, social services, etc. The differences on the surfaces remind me of Obama's political reputation compared to Obama's actions. The end result remains that almost all nations will slide or fail to perform as promised hurting the most common people and leaving the richest the most financially better off.
Obama does promote oligopoly, corporations, banks when other political systems in recent decades have also traveled the same path, while a few travelled a different path.
The more virtuos path in banking are often the 'Swedish model' which Jesse highlighted. " ... Jesse's Café Américain ... " "Greed, envy, pride: these are three fatal sparks that have set the souls of men on fire." Dante Alighieri
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28 November 2012
How Iceland Restrained the Anglo-American Banks: CBC Interviews Ólafur Grimsson
As you have read here and elsewhere, there is the 'Japanese model' and the 'Swedish model' for dealing with a crisis caused by asset bubbles and fraud from an oversized financial sector and an overly powerful segment of monied interests.
It is obviously a simplification to slot such a policy issue into two models, but it has some philosophical validity with regard to the resolution of the bad debt that follows such a period of financial recklessness by the Banks.
I should note that I have rarely if ever seen this sort of broader discussion of other policy alternatives in any mainstream US media, and certainly not during the presidential debates which tended to focus on soft issues, distractions, and style.
The Swedish model favors the disposition of the debt failures on the banks, and their management and bond holders. The Japanese model seeks to sustain the financial status quo and their associated corporate cartels with public debt and social policy adjustments.
Iceland has famously followed the 'Swedish model.' Perhaps so well it may better be called the 'Iceland model.'
If it is not apparent, what made the difference was the resolute manner in which the people of Iceland rejected the deal offered to them by the Banks and their politicians.
Americans made some initial attempts to prevent such bailouts as in TARP, before their politicians caved in to the 'bullet and the bribe.' But lost their fervor in the co-opting of the Tea Party movement, and even turned against the Occupy Wall Street movement in the face of a determined media campaign to portray them as outsiders, cranks, and radicals.
As a smaller nation with a stronger sense of community, the Icelanders receive more of their information from diverse and direct personal sources, rather than through interpretation and packaging of the news by a few large media outlets. They also seem less disposed to make a 'war on the weak' amongst their own people than the larger, more impersonalized nations with less homogenous populations.
The US, the UK, and the rest of Europe are currently following the 'Japanese model' of pretend and extend, supporting those who benefited from the bubble, the wealthy elite, with sovereign debt and a policy of austerity for the public.
The US and the UK seem likely to do so since they are the home ground of the banking cartel and the financial status quo, but the path that Europe is taking is a bit of a surprise considering they are supposed to be progressive and 'socialists.' It is no wonder that many of the key decision making slots are being 'handled' as they are by the monied interests, and their friends in big media are weaving a campaign of pride and nationalistic divisiveness to harness the darker side of human nature. It has worked before, at least twice in Germany during the last century, as you may recall.
Neither approach is easy or perfect. But it does seem that one is more just and effective than the other.
www.jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-iceland-restrained-anglo-american.html