Actually, O's discussion gives the opposite impression from your claim that he's a "market guy at heart." Notice the quiet implication that the Japanese approach of constantly pumping money into the _market_ doesn't look as good as the Swedish model..."
etc.
Maybe. Then again, maybe he is a clueless bourgeois liberal, scrambling, in over his head, desperately maintaining a facade of control and expertise as the capitalist system crashes around him.
We'll see.
But Geithner's Senate performance, where he came across as an eighth grader coming up with excuses about why he didn't do his homework but who promises, promises, promises to bring it in... someday, was IMO worse than any similar performance I can imagine even by the supposedly incompetent Bush II administration.
On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 8:22 AM, Charles Brown <cdb1003 at prodigy.net> wrote:
>
> "I think the Sweden vs. Japan quote from Obama
> shows that he's really a market guy at heart, "
>
> ^^^^^^
> CB: I can't imagine Bush, Clinton,Bush, Reagan...
> Johnson.. any modern American President saying anything like
>
> Obama: "So you'd think looking at it, Sweden
> looks like a good model."
>
> Then, he never says it's a bad model. He just says America has a different
> culture.
>
> Actually, O's discussion gives the
> opposite impression from your claim that he's a "market guy at heart."
> Notice the quiet implication that the
> Japanese approach of constantly pumping money into the _market_ doesn't
> look as good as the Swedish model.
> ( Does that mean he understands the Keynesian liquidity trap ?) He seems
> to want to cheat on America with
> a goodlooking Swedish model... but it would be kind of unAmerican ( as in
> the House UnAmerican Activities Committee) to do so.
>
> And of course he is really right about that.
> His use of "culture" is a euphemism for "hardline, fanatically
> anti-communist ideology drummed into everybody's
> head for the 40 years up until 20 years ago, the former third rail of
> American politics before the SU became former."
> He's not really sure that the ghost of McCarthy is exorcised; and he is
> not going to give the Republicans a "cultural"
> stick to beat him with. (Nor do Americans seem to have a lot of favor for
> European culture these days)
>
> Nor did the US public elect him based on a
> promise to be an aggressive radical or "countercultural" politician. That's
> not his mandate. Most Americans
> interpreted his change slogan as a promise to stop the nasty rightwing
> extremism of Bush. You are talking as if he was elected to carry out your
> ideas, which are slightly more left than
> his; and when you know he didn't campaign to your liking.
>
> Finally , I'm trying to figure if the following sounds like an anti-market
> guy at heart:
>
> "consume less, borrow less, equalize the
> distribution of income so that those of modest means aren't driven to manic
> borrowing from those with too much
> money to spare, and invest in things with a long-term economic and social
> payoff. "
>
>
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