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Published on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 by the New York Times
Oh. My. God. Obama Clueless
by Paul Krugman

The lead story on Bloomberg right now contains excerpts from an interview with Business Week which tells us:

President Barack Obama said he doesn't "begrudge" the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is "an extraordinary amount of money" for Main Street, "there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don't get to the World Series either, so I'm shocked by that as well."

"I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen," Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. "I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system."

Obama sought to combat perceptions that his administration is anti-business and trumpeted the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies. He plans to reiterate that message when he speaks to the Business Roundtable, which represents the heads of many of the biggest U.S. companies, on Feb. 24 in Washington.

Oh. My. God.

First of all, to my knowledge, irresponsible behavior by baseball players hasn't brought the world economy to the brink of collapse and cost millions of innocent Americans their jobs and/or houses.

The point is that these bank executives are not free agents who are earning big bucks in fair competition; they run companies that are essentially wards of the state. There's good reason to feel outraged at the growing appearance that we're running a system of lemon socialism, in which losses are public but gains are private. And at the very least, you would think that Obama would understand the importance of acknowledging public anger over what's happening.

dbackjon wrote:That was one of my biggest fears - that he was a good politician, but clueless to reality.


Apparantly, no different than McCain.

dbackjon wrote:That was one of my biggest fears - that he was a good politician, but clueless to reality.


Still, better than McCain.

ASUMountaineer wrote: The end of the Republic is not such a reckless notion anymore.

dbackjon wrote:That was one of my biggest fears - that he was a good politician, but clueless to reality.


Still, better than McCain.

dbackjon wrote:That was one of my biggest fears - that he was a good politician, but clueless to reality.


Still, better than McCain.

AZGrizFan wrote:

dbackjon wrote:That was one of my biggest fears - that he was a good politician, but clueless to reality.


Still, better than McCain.

Jon, he's not even a good politician. He's a good CANDIDATE. He's a good CAMPAIGNER. And he's a hell of a SPEAKER. But he's NOT a good politician, and he IS clueless to reality. And NONE of those traits make him a better choice than McCain. NONE.

Appaholic wrote:

ASUMountaineer wrote: The end of the Republic is not such a reckless notion anymore.

Nor any more scary than the alternative.....

kalm wrote:It's not even that the salaries are the problem. It's that these individuals remain in power and after more than a year into it we still don't have financial reform. When Sweden went through its economic crisis in the early nineties and had to temporarily nationalize their banks, the first thing they did was fire the management.

In the US they earn bonuses or become part of the president's economic team.

This has way more to do with campaign finance than anything else. Everyone should be beating the anti-corporatist drum at this point.

SeattleGriz wrote:I have said for months that Obama has never known adversity, and thus is completely taken aback when his ideas don't work.

Think about it. Here is an Ivy league educated community organizer. Who would have ever dared to question anything he had done for being labeled as a racist. You question Obama, you are a racist. You question his efforts in the communities he was organizing, you are piece of shat that doesn't care about the less fortunate.

I think up until his Presidency, he felt he had the golden touch, and now is the first time he has ever seen any sort of backlash against his ideas. He doesn't know what to think. Couple that with the fact that most of his staff and his ideology are based in the world of academia and you have a group that doesn't know how the real World works.

In essence, I think political correctness was a major factor in why Obama got where he is and why he is so confused. If someone, somewhere along his way to the top had thrown some roadblocks up, he might be different.

Now, with all that being said, I cannot imagine myself being any different than Obama had I risen to the top so fast. Obama is a victim of his own success.

kalm wrote:It's not even that the salaries are the problem. It's that these individuals remain in power and after more than a year into it we still don't have financial reform. When Sweden went through its economic crisis in the early nineties and had to temporarily nationalize their banks, the first thing they did was fire the management.

In the US they earn bonuses or become part of the president's economic team.

This has way more to do with campaign finance than anything else. Everyone should be beating the anti-corporatist drum at this point.

kalm wrote:Interesting take, but I'm not sure you can say it was easy or that a black man didn't face adversity on his rise to become president. And I don't think you'd see much different from any other mainstream candidate. They are all slaves to their corporate masters (no pun intended)

native wrote:

kalm wrote:It's not even that the salaries are the problem. It's that these individuals remain in power and after more than a year into it we still don't have financial reform. When Sweden went through its economic crisis in the early nineties and had to temporarily nationalize their banks, the first thing they did was fire the management.

In the US they earn bonuses or become part of the president's economic team.

This has way more to do with campaign finance than anything else. Everyone should be beating the anti-corporatist drum at this point.

The corporations are problematic, but not more so than the tax-and-spenders. Anti-corporatism will not solve the problems, it only entrenches the "political class" even deeper.

kalm wrote:...

I have no problem with corporations as long they too are not receiving welfare or become too big to fail. Regulation cannot happen unless corporate money is taken out of the election process.

Grizalltheway wrote:So if he doesn't begrudge them their bonuses, he's clueless and out of touch, but if he WERE to begrudge them their bonuses, Z and company would be howling about how he's a commie. Wonderful logic there.

Grizalltheway wrote:So if he doesn't begrudge them their bonuses, he's clueless and out of touch, but if he WERE to begrudge them their bonuses, Z and company would be howling about how he's a commie. Wonderful logic there.

Grizalltheway wrote:So if he doesn't begrudge them their bonuses, he's clueless and out of touch, but if he WERE to begrudge them their bonuses, Z and company would be howling about how he's a commie. Wonderful logic there.

The point is that these bank executives are not free agents who are earning big bucks in fair competition; they run companies that are essentially wards of the state. There's good reason to feel outraged at the growing appearance that we're running a system of lemon socialism, in which losses are public but gains are private.