Obama: "We need stimulus and regulation."

Obama tells FT:

Two points I want to make on this, Number one: The press has tended to frame this as an “either or approach”. There are some G20 participants that are arguing fiercely for stimulus, others for regulation. What I have consistently argued is that what is needed is a “both and approach”. We need stimulus and we need regulation.

Of course, the "stimulus" package simply distorts the structure of the economy by taking from those low on the political power totem poll and transferring to those with political power,

And, regulation is always about forcing the economy in a direction it does not want to go, with insiders, generally, determing the direction for their own advantage. You can't have regulatory capture, if you don't have regulators. But, if you have regulators, you will have a distorted economy.

Bottom line, Obama has never moved passed the very strong economic coercion formula that surrounded his thinking during his youth and early adult life. From the search to understand his father's thinking to the influence of "Frank", Obama was surrounded by socialist thought. His father a Harvard educated economist called for all sorts of nationalizations in his native land of Kenya.

As for the man Obama only identifies as "Frank" in his autobiography, Dream's From My Father, Cliff Kincaid writes:

...through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his "poetry" and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just "Frank."

The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What's more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.