Change You Cannot Believe In

Well, I think that it's becoming clear that the reason that Barack Obama is relying on Timothy "Eddie Haskell" Geithner and Lawrence Summers as the core of his economic team is not an accident.

Not only has his economic team been captured by Wall Street, but Barack Obama has been captured by Wall Street:

If the White House and congressional leaders get their way, the vaunted new oversight council charged with overseeing systemic risk in the financial markets will actually be a house organ of the Treasury Department, lacking the independence required to challenge decisions by government regulators, among others.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) last week tried to fix that, by offering an amendment in the House Financial Services Committee that would give the council an independent staff and independent source of funding. But he was forced to withdraw the amendment after it became clear that he wouldn't get Chairman Barney Frank's approval, said a source familiar with the committee's deliberations.

Let's be clear here, this council is supposed to review not just systemic risk, but also the behavior of the regulators:

As proposed by the Obama administration, the House bill calls for the council to be headed by the Treasury Secretary, who would pick his own staff from within the Treasury Department.

But not only is the council supposed to keep watch over firms and activities that pose a risk, it's also supposed to oversee the work of other regulators in mitigating threats and supervise financial regulation as a whole, according to the bill's language. In short, it has a mandate to watch over everything that could possibly endanger the financial system - including inaction and incompetence by regulators.

So, why are Barack Obama and His Stupid Minions^™ so absolutely determined to place the centerpiece of his regulatory reform thoroughly under the branch of the executive designed to be a lapdog for large banking interests?

I do not think that Barack Obama is that stupid, that is clear, though while a candidate, and now President, Barack Obama has always been a bit of a cipher.

The answer, I think, lies in his background.

Barack Obama is literally Chicago School, as in the University of Chicago, where he taught for 12 years, and his first "big name" economic advisor is Austan Goolsbee, who is faculty there, and I think that Barack Obama is clearly very devoted to the idea that the government must be held back to prevent it from interfering with economic "innovation".

Simply put, he is enthralled by the vision of Chicago School economics, as conceived by Milton Friedman and given flesh by Alan "Bubbles" Greenspan, and so he sees his primary role in economic reform to be ensuring that it is toothless and completely controlled by the large Wall Street banks.

When Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that, "The banks own the place," he was referring to Congress, but it's true of the White House.

They own Barack Obama too.