Two smart friends respond to the report that Larry Summers received millions from a hedge fund before coming back into government, as well as hundreds of thousands for speaking engagements.
Friend 1: This made my jaw drop this morning; the collected 2008 honorariums of Lawrence Summers; not just the amounts but who the people are that were writing his checks all year. Establishments are amazing things.
Friend 2: Don't forget how Summers got the Harvard job. Robert Rubin was a key figure on the Harvard Overseer Board. You ought to do a posting some time about how Jewish Harvard alumni transformed that once WASPish school. The story of the University of Pennsylvania is even more amazing. How the establishment replicates itself in the 21st century. The Ivy League University has replaced the Country Club as the breeding ground for the elite - Obama wouldn't join a country club, yet he is Prez.
Friend 2: Don't forget how Summers got the Harvard job. Robert Rubin was a key figure on the Harvard Overseer Board. You ought to do a posting some time about how Jewish Harvard alumni transformed that once WASPish school. The story of the University of Pennsylvania is even more amazing. How the establishment replicates itself in the 21st century. The Ivy League University has replaced the Country Club as the breeding ground for the elite - Obama wouldn't join a country club, yet he is Prez.
Can't outsmart my friends! I saw some of that happen at Harvard. At my 25th year reunion I had to listen to Rubin's speech-about-nothing. Of course, I wonder how much of the money is Jewish--out of my sense that Jews were (are?) the engine of the information-age economy. And America's a fluid place; we admire wealth-production. Like to marry successful people. Thus the high intermarriage rates.
I'd add that Hudson Institute gave Summers $10,000. Neocon holdout. And of course Summers stopped the divestment initiative in its tracks a few years back when he was Harvard President and said that it was anti-Semitic in intent. The new establishment is philosemitic and Israel is as American as cherry pie.
Larry Summers is just the tip of the iceberg. Today the WaPo reports that the Obama administration is setting up SPVs — Special Purpose Vehicles — to dodge the new limits on executive compensation at firms bailed out with taxpayer funds. Robert Rubin is laughing up his sleeve –
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The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.
The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials.
In one program, designed to restart small-business lending, President Obama's officials are planning to set up a middleman called a special-purpose vehicle — a term made notorious during the Enron scandal — or another type of entity to evade the congressional mandates, sources familiar with the matter said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/03/AR2009040303910.html?hpid=topnews
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The WaPo would have us believe that SPVs are a relic of the Enron era. Why, no; they are wholly contemporary. All of the Collateralized Debt Obligations — you know, the ones that sank the global economy — were issued via SPVs.
Since the same white-collar criminals who wrecked private finance are now running the U.S. government, it makes eminent sense that they would continue employing the same vehicles which have proven so effective in looting operations.
Laugh all you want. But Barack Dubya Obama will be taken down not by racism, not by Republicans, but by reeking corruption. As he lurches toward the end of his sole term, I'll be surprised if another aspect of the dismal Lyndon Johnson analogue doesn't surface. Namely, cities in flames, as the working-class victims of Obama's kleptocratic, Harvard-club neofeudalism lash back at their oppressors.
Anyone watch Bill Moyers yesterday? The Bill Black part, I mean. He more or less said that Obama should fire all his economic appointees and appoint a new batch of true independents–guys with no income tax skeletons in their closets.
so who is going to listen to Bill Moyers, apart from the peasantry?
The peasantry don't even know who Moyers is.