Obamanomics has now clearly failed. The reason is easy to understand. Obamanomics is just a replay of Clintonomics,with many of the same people calling the shots.
Obama-Clintonomics was based on puffing up Wall Street investment banks every way imaginable, thus encouraging them to rig the stock market upwards, so as to jolly up the rubes on Main Street, who would be so giddy they would borrow like crazy from banks willing to lend like crazy at exorbitant interest rates because the Fed was giving them money to do so practically free.
This expected outcome didn’t come to pass because Surprise!, the realities of this decade aren’t the same as those of the 1990s. Golly wonkers. Different times require different approaches to meet different challenges with a different team needed to do the job? You needed real change, not rhetorical change?
Who coulda figured?
The failure of this approach has now become so obvious that even those who bungled things so badly see that’s so — not an easy thing to acknowledge by certified best and brightest types. Being of this genere, however, they are as adept at concocting rationales for their own failures as they are at actually failing. So here’s the two reasons this crowd will likely use to explain what went wrong in hopes of exonerating themselves: The Republicans did it; and the Europeans did it.
They will say, quite accurately, that Republicans in Congress and the media in no way have cooperated advancing Obama and Democratic congressional policies. Well, duh. That must have come as quite a shock to them. People as unable to admit errors as yourselves, people who have an obvious interest making their successors look bad, actually decided not to cooperate to make the successors look successful.
Who coulda figured?
In fact, as anyone who has ever confronted a loud-mouthed schoolyard bully knows, the only way to get any cooperation at all from this dude is to confront him and beat him down. In a Beltway context, that means taking on in the most vigorous and overt manner the special interests with whom this Republican bullyboy is identified. Wall Street. Health insurers. Oil and gas giants.
The Obama economic team opted instead to favor this same trio. They did so in part because they themselves became addicted to taking Wall Street money in the 1990s. In bigger part, because they convinced themselves that tapping into the genuine desire of the American people for real change could not be harnessed sufficiently to counteract big interests’ big money.
The results? Failure to bring about adequate changes on all major reform fronts; the rise in right wing populism because no plausible left wing populist alternative was presented; almost certain greater suffering for millions of already suffering Americans; and the absolute certainty that a flood of truly reactionary types will soon inundate the Capitol.
While playing the blame game with Republicans, the Obama economic team will also point to Europe, especially those countries in the EU and Scandinavia that had the unmitigated gall not to buy into the 1990s best and brightests’ nostrums. These awful Europeans are not only accepting the need for austerity these days, but heavens, actually calling it austerity, at the same time they are somehow managing to retain at least the basics of their national safety nets while we shred ours and pretend it’s not happening. If the Europeans had just dug their own economic holes deeper for a little while longer, the Obama people will claim, then our own recovery — you know, the one that has allegedly been going on for months now — would have gotten even stronger.
Ultimately, no matter how you slice it, as the old saying goes, it’s still baloney. Obama and his economic team have squandered their opportunities (and our futures) badly. Yet another proof of this is to be found in Joe Gandelman’s post today about a huge fall off of Wall Street contributions to Democratic congressional fundraising. This demonstrates the simple fact that Wall Streeters have gotten as much as they can from the Democratic crowd for the time being and are now queuing up to tap Republican legislative largesse.
One more thing the Obama economic team got wrong. Believing Wall Street would be grateful for past favors. Instead, it seems, The Street is a place where ingratitude rivals greed as the favored model of behavior.
Who coulda figured?
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