By tolstoy, April 7 at 6:29 pm

I knew there was a problem when obama was pretty well assured of becoming the dem nominee for president, did a lot of cozying up to corporate america, not to mention the izraeli lobby and others. That decided for me that I would not vote for obama and he is not making me feel bad about my vote for someone else. As a matter of fact, about the only thing I can claim as good is that mccain/palin did not get elected. Classic american lose/lose situation.

I see Black’s comments indicate about 90% of the CEO group weren’t paying attention, maybe because ‘when it’s raining gold you don’t open your umbrella,’ as you said. A devious 10 percent including Enron and Madoff types, probably worse, are the guiding lights. Black is right: you study accidents to avoid repeating; you don’t study to avoid exposing what you’re covering up.  My question is this: how could Obama go along with all this?  Why all these contradictions?

Black like many is speaking to his own choir who may or may not buy his book.  Frankly I think there was more stupidity then larceny involved.  Read Cohan’s “House of Cards” about Bear Stearns.  There is plenty of somewhat legal larceny (if that is not a contradiction) but frankly it is far exceeded by outright stupidity.  This whole mess has many fathers and mothers aided and abetted by the inevitable whores.  But it really comes down to my dad’s great summation of why the ‘29 market kept going when everyone knew it was going to crash: “When it is raining gold, no one’s gonna be the first one to open his umbrella.”  The huge bonuses however stink.  I lay the blame at the feet of the board of directors and the shareholders who saw this in the annual reports and quietly acquiesced.  It reminds me of the “options” mess during the high tech bubble.  Nobody cared at the time because there was so much paper money being made.  However once the bubble burst and we looked around, there were quite a few multi millionaires still standing and it pissed everybody off.  That era has by and large ended…as I am quite sure the era of the huge Wall Street bonuses is coming to its inevitable end.
As I see it, the problem now is simply to fix the banking system so that credit once again flows through the economy.  Populist rage, though appealing, hinders the solution and can lead to feel good legislation that will only prolong and metastasize this cancer.  Frankly I trust Obama.  Let him govern.  If it doesn’t work I am quite sure we will have ample opportunity to sharpen our critical pencils and aim our diatribes at the new Republican administration and congressional majority.

I am a bleeding heart liberal and I am growing more and more suspicious of the Obama agenda.
Why would a proponent of change have James L Jones as an adviser and Geithner as well as a few other questionable talents left over from the Bush regime.
His staff does not personify change.
How is Susan Rice any different in policy then Condy Rice?

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What would happen if after a plane crashes, we said, “Oh, we don’t want to look in the past. We want to be forward looking. Many people might have been, you know, we don’t want to pass blame. No. We have a nonpartisan, skilled inquiry. We spend lots of money on, get really bright people. And we find out, to the best of our ability, what caused every single major plane crash in America. And because of that, aviation has an extraordinarily good safety record. We ought to follow the same policies in the financial sphere. We have to find out what caused the disasters, or we will keep reliving them. And here, we’ve got a double tragedy. It isn’t just that we are failing to learn from the mistakes of the past. We’re failing to learn from the successes of the past.
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This is what has really floored me in my hope that obama really meant change, change to fix a problem but all we got was ‘we have to move forward’ dooming us to remain in stasis for the ‘elite’ and repeating history. Bad decision on obama’s part. And I still hope obama comes to a realization of the real change he announced in the compaign without having to deal the anarchy or a strict police state.

Mr. Black’s comments have such a ring of truth that I have no doubt he is absolutely right about what he is saying.  Therefore, it is clear that a conspiracy has been formed by the powers that be to engage in a cover-up of the truth.  I do not know how they convinced Obama to abandon the principles put forth in his campaign of truth and transparency, but I guess he has been made to believe that a huge panic would occur if the American people realized that the banks were insolvent and the global economic system would collapse.  Perhaps it would.  But regardless we cannot allow this kind of financial blackmail to go forward.  In this age of the the internet and rapid interconnectivity and with so many suffering first hand the results of this financial fraud, I do believe that the people will raise their voices and the Congress and President will listen and this cover-up will be revealed.  Obviously the lessons of history have been forgotten.  Nixon resigned rather than be impeached for his part in a cover-up of a crime.

Mr. President, in the following lines, I will explain what it is like to live on practically nothing, due to the failure of attorneys and governmental officials.
Mr. President, I have been disabled since my first surgery in 1989, at that time I applied for the Social Security Disability payments that I thought were due me because of the simple fact that I could not work at a real job anymore. During the application process, I was told by the worker that I was the wrong colour, ie., white, male, and that I would not receive the payments due me.
From that time until April of 2008, I fought for my rights under the Social Security Act, and finally received not SSDI, but Supplemental Security Income.
I now receive a paltry sum of money and a meager allowance of food stamps, to stay alive. Luxuries I do not have, neither can I afford the things that would make my life better and that most Americans take for granted.
In this time of financial collapse, with bankers receiving bonuses of untold amounts, isn’t it time that the people who worked all their lives for meager
incomes and substandard wages to receive something for their hard work and slave wages.
I am sure that if the bankers and Wall Street Thugs,
those who caused this financial crisis, were made to live like myself, there would be such a hue and cry from these people, that living wages and SSI recipients would receive higher amounts than they do now. For no one, can survive on the amounts that the government gives for people who cannot work but are willing to try.
I would love to receive an education, but cannot sit still long enough for the classroom style education, other than that, I believe that I could go to school online, but that requires lots of money, which money I do not receive.
Please Mr. President do not forget the people who are
stuck in a hole and who cannot get out of it.