Marley redux

We can’t call Obama “Marley’s Ghost.” He’s much too alive for that. However, he’s dragging a chain behind him that’s every bit as long and heavy as Marley’s was. Its links are the dead ideologies forged by men long in their dotage.

His coddling of the banks is one of the links, specifically the link forged from the belief that the banks could clean up the mess that they created. The result, as William Greider points out is that, “The leading bankers worked out a rare deal for themselves that essentially says to the government in Washington ‘heads we win, tails you lose.’”

Now, thanks to bail out money and accounting gimmicks, the banks are singing “Happy Days are Here Again.” The economy will bounce back in the last half of 2009, which means it will be time to float another asset bubble and to encourage tapped-out consumers to sink even further into debt.

According to Greider, “The essential bet Obama made as president was to insist on a ‘voluntary’ approach to rescuing the financial system, picking up the main policies launched by his predecessor.” Of course they were the same policies. We may have a different administration in the White House, but the lobbyists are the same.

One of these days Obama may figure out that the only way to deal with a bully is to kick him in the balls.

Greider pinpoints the problem when he says, “His (Obama’s) political logic was obvious—maintain the appearance of temporary intervention to assist private enterprise and avoid any accusations of left-wing activism. The right called him a socialist anyway.”

That perhaps is the strongest link in Obama’s chain—a Democratic Party that is still running scared of the right-wing noise machine. Left-wing activism is what we need right now and the democrats are acting like a sick man who refuses to get his prescription filled because he’s afraid the pharmacist will yell at him.

Hell, given the scope of our economic meltdown, it’s a complement to be called a Socialist.

Maybe the democrats will wake up and discover that McCarthy’s been dead for 52 years.

Maybe…