Obama: Nationalization “Wouldn’t Make Sense” – TPM (2/10/09)”

“[Sweden] took over the banks, nationalized them, got rid of the bad assets, resold the banks and a couple years later, they were going again. So you’d think looking at it, Sweden looks like a good model. Here’s the problem — Sweden had like five banks,” he said, laughing. “We’ve got thousands of banks. You know, the scale of the U.S. economy and the capital markets are so vast and the, the problems in terms of managing and overseeing anything of that scale, I think, would — our assessment was that it wouldn’t make sense. And we also have different traditions in this country.”

Yes we can?

This is a cop-out on so many levels that it’s sickening. It’s also a fantastic opportunity for Obama to continue making the case that he’s no DFH, and Geithner to protect his masters on Wall Street. Sweden has under 10 million citizens — even less 20 years ago — and the U.S. has 300 million. We have thousands of banks, but not all of them are insolvent. And our traditions apparently include allowing our capital markets to morph into a casino where the only people who lose are the ones who don’t play. None of Obama’s excuses “make sense.”

The idea that the Bush/Paulson plan of pouring taxpayer money into banks to protect shareholders is continuing under Obama renders any defense of the new administration DOA.

This sounds familiar:

At what point do you think Obama fans will dispense with this weird fantasy that your reader BR indulges in about what Obama is really thinking and what his real plans are?
I personally am an Obama fan. And I think it makes sense to give him the benefit of the doubt during the period before actual policy is either announced or implemented. But there has to come a point where people stop pretending that Obama is some superintelligent ninjalike political operator who’s playing the game at a level the rest of us novices cannot even comprehend and instead start holding him accountable for the decisions that he or his subordinates make.

When Geithner was nominated a lot of people complained that he was a poor choice because he was far too beholden to the big Wall Street players and their interests. Now it appears that he’s trying to do everything in his power to protect those very people at the expense of the American tax payer. For better or worse this falls squarely on Obama’s shoulders–as it should.

I think people want Obama to be something that perhaps he’s not–namely, a strong progressive democrat. Maybe he really is a centrist (and I don’t mean a vague meaningless Ben Nelson type) and that’s fine. But if a person is hoping for a more progressive president it won’t really do any good to pretend that he’d be more progressive if only he could. Sooner or later people are going to have to demand more progressive policy.

Though he rolled back a couple of Bush’s most toxic executive orders and signed SCHIP, Obama is doing many of the same things for which the left pilloried Bush. Why are these things OK because Obama is doing them? I’m not suggesting that we start impeachment proceedings, but how long are you prepared to watch him sell you out?