The Obama Press Conference: John Maynard Keynes and the Oligarchs Are Alive and Well

John Maynard Keynes and Oligarchs appear to be alive, well and ready for the Obama Administration.

In Barack Obama's first press conference, since winning the presidential election, Obama sounded like a typical big spending Democrat. In opening remarks, he called for a "rescue package" for the middle class, unemployment extensions and other fiscal stimulus. He also said that something had to be done for the automobile industry since it is "the backbone of the country." Somewhere, John Maynard Keynes and Marx are blushing.

Obama did not address how any of these proposals would be paid for.

I took special note of some of the members of his "economic transition advisory team", most of whom stood behind him as he promised to do vasts sums more spending than Imelda Marcos ever did during a good shoe shopping trip to New York City. It was a politically correct mixed crowd that included many women, a Latino and even another African-American, interspersed with oligarchs. Just what you need to fight a downturn in the economy, a politically correct group and oligarchs.

The oligarchs we were told included Warren Buffett (who, golly shucks, usually just represents himself) and Robert Rubin (former Goldman Sachs CEO, now running the Rubin/Citigroup wing of Goldman),but both failed to appear in chorus line fashion behind Obama for the press conference, as did the politically correct and other oligarchs and oligarch representatives.

At the press conference chorus line, the towering Paul Volcker was there, who has been a career long Rockefeller operative. The tiny Robert Reich was there, who was most likely invited as a reward for his regular bashing, on his blog, of Hillary, during the primaries.

An oligarch stepped a bit out of the shadows for the chorus line, Chicago-based Penny Pritzker, who was an early Obama backer, was there. Pritzker served as Obama's National Finance Chair. She and her husband hosted a $28,500 per plate fundraiser for Obama's campaign in Chicago with Warren Buffett and his wife, and Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is 135th richest person on the Forbes 400 list of "America's wealthiest," with an estimated net worth of $2.8 billion US. If one was forced to come up with one name that Obama answers to, Penny Pritzker would not be a bad choice. They are on each others cell phone speed dials, guaranteed.

The Chicago Political Machine was well represented by Mayor Richard Daley's brother William, who also is a member of the executive committee at JP Morgan Chase.

Google's Chairman Eric Schmidt was part of the chorus line.

Much to my surprise, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was the token Latino. Readers will recall I had a Q & non-A encounter with the mayor, only a few weeks back.

In short, no one in this group strikes me as the type that understands Say's Law, never mind the business cycle. They all are very good, though, at protecting the very powerful interests that they are aligned with, nothing else. The oligarchs are sleeping very well tonight.

Alert: Obama Press Conference

US President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden will hold a news conference at 2:30 EST on Friday after meeting with their team of economic advisers to discuss the transition to the White House.

Obama and Biden will be joined by economic advisers, including former Treasury Secretaries Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker, former Securities and Exchange Commissioner William Donaldson and several others. Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett will participate via phone.

All major networks are expected to carry the press conference live.

Fed Chairmen I've Known (and Opposed)

Ron Paul speaks at the Mises Institute Supporters Summit, here.

Includes personal stories about Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan.

Barack Obama, Paul Volcker and Warren Buffett

It appears that Paul Volcker will be a major influence in a Barack Obama Administration.

WSJ this morning has a front page article by WSJ reporter Monica Langley describing the development of their relationship. The Volcker connection should calm markets a bit if there is an Obama Administration, since he seems to be taking advice from Volcker and Warren Buffett. Volcker is even more respected on the Street than Buffett.

Volcker, however, as I pointed out recently, despite his image as an inflation slayer, is an inflationist and interventionist. Buffett is pretty much out of the same mold. He has supported the recent moves by Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke. Curiously, while supporting Treasury and Fed moves, Buffett in his recent WSJ piece even pointed out the inflationary ramifications of the policy:

Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They
have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. Indeed, the policies that government will follow in its efforts to alleviate the current crisis will probably prove inflationary and therefore accelerate declines in the real value of cash accounts.

The Global Inflationist, Interventionist Volcker

Paul Volcker, who as Fed Chairman, slayed the out of control inflation of the late 1970's-early 1980's, is, of late, showing that deep down his allegiances still belong to the insiders.

In today's Wall Street Journal, for example, Volcker hails the interventionist measures proposed by Henry Paulson at Treasury, and hails an increase in global inflation:

First of all, there is now clear recognition that the problem is international, and international coordination and cooperation is both necessary and underway. The days of finger pointing and schadenfreude are over. The concerted reduction in central bank interest rates is one concrete manifestation of that fact.

More important in existing circumstances is the clear determination of our Treasury, of European finance ministries, and of central banks to support and defend the stability of major international banks. That approach extends to providing fresh capital to supplement private funds if necessary.

These comments clearly demonstrate that Volcker has no strong anti-inflation spirit deep in his soul. It is obvious, now, that he did not slay the inflation of the 70's, for the people and because it was the right thing to do, but because the Rockefeller grroup wanted that inflation slayed.

Volcker is a founding member of the Trilateral Commission, is the current Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty. He is also a member of the Trust Committee of Rockefeller Group, Inc. and also currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the International House, an international Rockefeller organization designed to nurture future generations of Rockefeller operatives.

It's Time The Fed Adopts Volcker Religion

By Robert Wenzel

Federal officials and market players are struggling with the same issues, WSJ reports.Why haven't the steps taken so far calmed the system? What can policy makers do next?

In our book, the answer is simple. The boom was fueled by the Fed's money printing under Alan Greenspan and the early Ben Bernanke.

As we have been emphasizing in lone wolf fashion--with no regulator or other commentator coming close to mentioning this most important event of the current crisis environment--the Fed over the recent months has for all practical purposes stopped printing money. That's why the market continues to struggle.  The Fed has turned this from just a mortgage crisis, to the beginnings of a major full-fledged economic crisis.

Over the last three months M2 money supply has been growing at a 1.8% annualized rate. This can be compared to earlier this year when M2 annualized money growth was over 10%. In fact, as recently as March, three month annualized money growth was at 12.7%. Few seem to recognize the dramatic shift downward.

A lot of headline watching commentators are even reporting that the Fed is adding gobs of liquidity through their bailout operations, when in fact the Fed has been sterilizing its bailout operations, including the Term Auction Facilities, by either liquidating or loaning out the Treasury securities already in their portfolio.

WSJ reflects current beliefs when it reports:

The Federal Reserve has already slashed interest rates to counteract a deepening credit freeze and instituted its broadest expansion of lending facilities since the Great Depression to keep financial markets functioning.

As mentioned the lending facilities have been sterilized so as not to increase money supply. And we should have learned from the Volcker period that you don't target interest rates to impact the economy, you target money supply. The current Bernanke Fed has seemingly, without being completely aware, slipped into interest rate targeting.

At this point we must add that ideally the Fed shouldn't be monkeying and manipulating the money supply at all, but in realworld economik if the Fed is going to be messing with the money supply, they should be good at it. This means reverting back to Volcker's rejection of targeting interest rates, and instead targeting money supply. In Volcker's case, he targeted money supply to fight inflation, in Bernanke's case, money supply targeting is required to battle economic crisis.

This economy isn't going anywhere until Bernanke gets Volcker "Target The Money Supply" Religion. Failure to do so will lead to an enormous economic crisis which in one sense can be viewed as a cleansing of the mal-investments caused by the money manipulations of Greenspan and Bernanke. However, in the land of realworld economik, the crisis is likely to lead to untold suffocating new regulations, restrictions etc., given that the two current presidential candidates, John McCain and Barak Obama, display no knowledge of the fundamental workings of an economy. 

Robert Wenzel is an economic consultant and Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com. He can be reached at rw@economicpolicyjournal.com.

Volcker Says Finance System `Broken'

"This bright new system, this practice in the United States, this practice in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, has broken down. Growth in the economy in this decade will be the slowest of any decade since the Great Depression, right in the middle of all this financial innovation. It is the most complicated financial crisis I have ever experienced, and I have experienced a few...

Changes are going to have to be made'' to the global financial system."

-Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker in a speech today at a banking conference in Calgary

Is It Time To Put A Presidential Candidate In Your Pocket?

The presidential campaigns are going begging for super-CEO support, but keep in mind these CEO's know how to collect on a chit when it is time. If a CEO is on one of the lists of support below, he considers the candidate he is endorsing in his pocket. .

Monca Langley at WSJ reports:

In the contest for business approval, the campaigns are lining up "poster CEOs." Sen. McCain has FedEx Corp. Chairman Fred Smith, private-equity guru Henry Kravis and Merrill Lynch & Co. CEO John Thain.

McCain plans to release the "Tech 100" -- high-tech executives who back his economic plans, a list the campaign says includes Cisco Systems Inc.'s John Chambers and Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems Inc...

[F]ormer chief executives Carly Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard Co., or Meg Whitman of eBay Inc., back up Sen. McCain on the stump.

In Sen. Obama's camp are investor Warren Buffett, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and Robert Wolf, president of UBS Investment Bank...

The Obama campaign is also enlisting [other] heavy hitters. A few weeks ago, the Obama campaign, led by billionaire Penny Pritzker and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. executive William Daley, invited a group of business executives to a meeting in New York, including some who had supported Sen. Hillary Clinton, such as former deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman and private-equity financier Steve Rattner

Henry Kravis is campaigning for McCain for one reason and one reason only, he doesn't want Obama in with his heavy tax hand on the rich. It would impact Kravis big time.

I don't have a clue why Paul Volcker is supporting Obama, but it does mean one thing. If Obama gets in Ben Bernanke is a one term Fed chairman. Volcker has no respect for Bernanke.

The Pritzkers are the real big money, early money behind Obama.

Obama supporter, Warren Buffett is kind of an idiot savant, he is an investment genius, but when it comes to economic understanding or basic common sense, he has none. The man has bllions, and still lives in the same house as when he only had $10 in his pocket, which means he is also a very odd duck. Obama can have him.

Obama's Economic Brain Trust?

Barack Obama plans to meet a panel of advisers today to examine his campaign’s ?economic policies. The gathering will include Warren Buffett, the billionaire ?investor, Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, Paul ?Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, and ?both Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretaries.

Obama told NBC on Sunday that the team would discuss a second potential stimulus package, ways to shore up the housing market, and energy and infrastructure initiatives.

Let's see what comes out if this group. You have Goldman Sachs represented through Robert Rubin. You have the great investor Warren Buffett who turns into an economic idiot whenever he talks about economic policy.

Can You Know an Economist By The Redistributionist Commies He Supports For President?

The following is a list compiled by Economists for Obama, of Obama supporters:

Economic policy advisors:

Austan Goolsbee (chief advisor), University of Chicago tax policy expert
Karen Kornbluh (policy director)
Jeff Liebman, Harvard welfare expert
David Cutler, Harvard health policy expert
Michael Froman, Citigroup executive
David Romer, Berkeley macroeconomist
Christina Romer, Berkeley economic historian
Richard Thaler, University of Chicago behavioral finance expert

Other economists who support Obama:

Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve 1979-1987
Brad Delong, Berkeley macroeconomist
Joseph Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel laureate
Edmund Phelps, 2006 Nobel laureate
Ray Fair, Yale macroeconomist

Prominent finance people who support Obama:

(not technically economists)
William Donaldson, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair 2003-05
Arthur Levitt, SEC chair 1993-2001
David Ruder, SEC chair 1987-1989

The heavy Berkeley influence doesn’t come as any surprise, but what is a Citigroup exec doing on the list? Et tu, Paul Volcker?

Tons of SEC chairmen are big Obama supporters. SEC chairmen who have increased securities regulation from chairman to chairman but never managed to nip an Enron or a housing securitization crisis,before they exploded into national crises.Strikes me a lot as to what an Obama Administration might look like: Lots of regulation and no success at solving any problems.

Greenspan, The Slasher

A song memorializing Alan Greenspan's interest rate cuts, with apologies to Billy Joel.

He cut it once, he cut it twice
He cut it twelve times before
But still they believe to the core
That this cut was needed even more

But oh, there's no market bounce
And they should know it's time to buy the Mapleleaf gold ounce

Yet they stand there pleadin'
With their portfolios bleedin
'Cause deep down they want even more

Then he says he wants to fight deflation
It's such a clever obfuscation

He's so good with his explanation
They don't even see the looming disastrous inflation

He cuts so hard, he cuts so deep
He's got so much skill
He's so fascinating that they'll still be there waiting
When he comes back with the bill
They' ve been slashed in the face
Their portfolios a disgrace

But still they want more

'Cause he gives them what they need
While their stocks bleed

Then he says he is fighting deflation
What a clever obfuscation

He's so good with his explanation
They even think he is a sensation

He cuts a quarter, he cuts a half
As he carves up the economy’s life
But they won't do nothing
As he keeps on cutting
'Cause you know they love the knife

The market’s been overbought, the market’s been oversold
But they stand there pleadin'
With their portfolios bleedin'
'Cause deep down they want even more

From this Randian phony to the core

Then he says he is fighting deflation
What a clever obfuscation

He's so good with his explanation
They even think it is good for the nation

But the truth is the slasher
Is carving up a big time disaster

Inflation is ahead
You need gold under your bed
Use your head

Crudele, Rogers, Paul and Volcker have got this right
It is not going to be a pretty sight.