Peter Daou’s Must-Read: Obama and the Goldman Fiasco: Is This America Under Democratic Leadership

Peter Daou, political consultant and former adviser to Hillary Clinton, has posted must-read comprehensive coverage of the latest economic developments at Huffpo titled Obama and the Goldman Fiasco: Is This America Under Democratic Leadership? Daou begins:

I live in downtown Manhattan, within a few blocks of the new Goldman Sachs World Headquarters and the (still) aching hole that was once the World Trade Center. The latter is a site where time stopped and the world gasped, where the unthinkable happened and heroes laid down their lives; the former is the site of unthinkable greed.

What does it say that the toil and sweat of the first responders who willingly streamed into the burning towers is used to enrich people who "earn" more in a week than a nurse or teacher makes in a year? What does it say that Iranians can march by the millions, put life and limb on the line, while Americans sit meekly by as a financial colossus with tentacles deep into the federal government enriches itself beyond our imagination on the backs of the poor and struggling? What does it say that the media and online commentariat, the crafters of conventional wisdom, spend a hundred times the focus on Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin? What does it say that Democrats, handed the reins of power, are allowing this to happen under their watch?

Daou, who worked for Obama after he won the Democratic primary, now tells us: “Count me as a Democrat deeply troubled by my own Party. Here's why:”

He goes on to cite comments from Matt Taibi, Zandar, Arianna Huffington, Jerome Armstrong, Ian Welsh, dday, Les Leopold, Robert Reich, the NY Times, and Paul Krugman, and he also includes a couple of relevant videos.

Read More:

Krugman Unleashed: Obama Administration Has Made Another Financial Crisis More Likely

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT
___________________________________________________________________________

Paul Krugman has gone easy on the Obama Administration in the past several weeks with only mild criticism and soft-pedaled warnings about the ongoing financial crisis. But record profits just reported by Goldman Sachs have set the Nobel-prize winning economist off this morning. In today’s NY Times op-ed, Krugman writes:

The American economy remains in dire straits, with one worker in six unemployed or underemployed. Yet Goldman Sachs just reported record quarterly profits — and it’s preparing to hand out huge bonuses, comparable to what it was paying before the crisis. What does this contrast tell us?

First, it tells us that Goldman is very good at what it does. Unfortunately, what it does is bad for America.

Second, it shows that Wall Street’s bad habits — above all, the system of compensation that helped cause the financial crisis — have not gone away.

Third, it shows that by rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington {the Obama Administration} has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely.

If you can stand to read more, go here.