Larry H. Summers, one of Obama’s top economic advisers among other White House staff, recently released a personal financial disclosure form. The Obama White House is making thousands of millions dollars from Wall Street for themselves. Simmers earned US$5.2 million as compensation from D.E. Shaw in 2008, US$2.7 million as speaking fees for several Wall Street firms, US$45,000 for an appearance in meetings, US$135,000 to visit Goldman Sachs for a day, and many such entries in the disclosure form accumulate to stupendous figures for a single year. When Obama’s White House is called a Wall Street government, there are reasons.
Most of these payments made were made to Summers in around April last year when either Obama or Clinton were expected to be in the White House this year. If any of the two would win the election, it was expected that Larry H. Summers would be in the very same position he is in now, the single most influential financial position in the US government. Some of the remittances indicated in the disclosure form (like the US$45, 000) were received only 8 days to Obama’s election. While it is wrong and illegal to receive a bribe so as to influence government decisions, what the Obama administration did was to receive the bribe in advance, before assuming office.
Obama first considered Larry H. Summers for the post of Treasury Secretary just before naming him as his topmost economics advisers. This change of heart ensured that Larry H. Summers needed no confirmation from the senate. So, even the president had an idea that Summers was into the big bucks, behind the scenes. The Wall Street government had played their cards well knowing fully well that when time came Summers would in return exert influence, Wall Street influence, during the determination of who actually benefited from the government during the financial crisis. The results of having been bribed are far too clear to miss.
The deception has not just started. Massive fraud is at the back of the press releases and press conferences. The media has been reporting of Tim Geithner and his role in creating the economic crises we are now in yet he was promoted to Treasury Secretary to continue his wreckage. Besides that, in a crusade championed by Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin who is Geithner’s mentor, and Larry H. Summers back in the late 90’s, instrumental efforts were blocked to keep regulators such as Brooksley Born, Chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission among others from regulating the financial derivatives market. It is from this failure to regulate that the global financial crisis was engineered. Obama officials have been wrecked by the Wall Street influence to make his entire administration a Wall Street government.
Perhaps this explains the Wall Street influence on decisions both during the present administration and the past ones. For instance, Barney Frank, the current chairman, House Financial Services Committee, recently said that the Obama administration had not consulted him before dishing out the US$85 billion granted as bailout for American International Group. According to Frank, that decision might as well have been made by the Wall Street government, for the United States government.
The irony is that in this year alone, the world has been shocked to the bone by a myriad of unprecedented Wall Street mishaps, failures. The world over, similar woes are being heard and their genesis has been authored by the Wall Street government, directly and or indirectly. For the first time ever, money market funds have been battered, the Graphic Dow Jones and US Mutual Fund Assets are scaring investors away, the Boston Capital has seen the fear index sink the Dow by 449, insurers across the globe have been smacked square by the AIG fallout, lenders are now exploiting borrowers, Washington Mutual is hanging on the balance, with lives of millions on the risk and all over, the credit crisis is getting worse.
These are but some of the effects that have rippled across the globe, just because Wall Street faltered on a step or two. The Wall Street influence on the government is phenomenally huge. The US economy is dictated and governed by Wall Street. That has not changed much even now. The weight thrown around by the Wall Street has developed by and by after government failure to regulate the economy and becoming beneficiaries of the cash cows. It has been the investor’s job to determine policy, reserve and emergency measures for eventualities rather than government controlled initiatives.
[ad#downcont]Some key individual like Summers, bounce back and forth from the private to public financial firms in successive governments. While in government, they influence the creation and implementation of such laws as would help them amass wealth maximally the moment they step out of government. After the current round, they go back to corporate America and get massive rewards enabled and facilitated by the laws they helped implement. If things look up, they step back into office and prepare for the next spree of pay outs. That deception is so simple yet it costs the citizenry through the nose.