Who is the guy to the right of Obama...

[Peter_Puget]

 

[Off_White]

There's a lot of guys to the right of Obama, but not as many as the Republican Party would have you believe. I think he's a lot more centrist than the McCain camp wanted people to believe.

[No. 13 Baby]

That's Paul Volcker between Obama and Rahm Emanuel.

[billcoe]

There's a lot of guys to the right of Obama, but not as many as the Republican Party would have you believe. I think he's a lot more centrist than the McCain camp wanted people to believe.

 

LOL! In the picture!

[j_b]

The baldy old guy betweem Obama and Emanuel is Paul Vockler, the fed reserve under CArter and Reagan.

 

In his book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey writes that Volker personified one of the key facets of the neoliberal era.

 

“[Volker] engineered a draconian shift in U.S. monetary policy. The long-standing commitment in the U.S. liberal democratic state to the principles of the New Deal, which meant broadly Keynesian fiscal and monetary policies with full employment as a key objective, was abandoned in favour of a policy designed to quell inflation no matter what the consequences might be for employment. The real rate of interest, which had often been negative during the double-digit inflationary surge of the 1970s, was rendered positive by fiat of the Federal Reserve. The nominal rate of interest was raised overnight … Thus began ‘a long deep recession that would empty factories and break unions in the U.S. and drive detour countries to the brink of insolvency, beginning a long-era of structural insolvency’. The Volker shock, as it has since come to be known, has to be interpreted as a necessary but not sufficient condition of neoliberalism.”

 

In supporting Henry Paulson’s bailout package, Volker would not re-regulate the banks nor provide more power to shareholders, he’s simply carry on one facet of neoliberalism: tightening federal budgets which inevitably will put great budgetary pressure on federal agencies.

[prole]

Great Scott, man! Are you suggesting that guy was some kind of an "architect" for the mess we're in today?!

[Peter_Puget]

Volker is a good guy! Wish he was staying as the treasury man but alas.........a less crazed history would state that Volker helped set the stage for a couple decades of growth!

[j_b]

Great Scott, man! Are you suggesting that guy was some kind of an "architect" for the mess we're in today?

 

Yep, precisely.

Edited November 8, 2008 by j_b

[j_b]

Speculative growth for the upper 0.1% of the income bracket and nobody else.

[prole]

Volker is a good guy! Wish he was staying as the treasury man but alas.........a less crazed history would state that Volker helped set the stage for a couple decades of growth!

 

If by "growth" you mean the boil that's been festering on our collective face that's now ruptured and drowning us in pus, then yes you might be on to something...

[dougd]

Ya gotta like a guy that calls himself a "mut" at his first press conference as President Elect.

 

d