President Obama has been beyond a huge disappointment. 

The reasons for his significant failure in the first year of his Presidency are varied, and yesterday I read a very insightful essay on MSN Money by Paul B. Farrell of the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch   that hones in on a number of opportunities Obama could have seized upon as a result of the financial collapse that would have allowed him to increase the already significant political capital that he possessed on the day of his inauguration.   

In the simplest parlance - he blew it!

This writer will have more to say on the specifics of those issues, but that is for another entry posted here on this blog.  More importantly for purposes of today’s entry, I offer a humble mea culpa for my idealistic beliefs that this man was really different from all the others.  I pride myself on being intellectually honest enough to admit that I was wrong about Obama’s willingness to effectuate any substantial change in this country with acumen and finesse.  How stupid of me to believe that he would really first focus on the one issue that was at the forefront of every voter’s mind since November, 2007 - one year before the 2008 election – and has continuously been the leading issue for the past two years.

In the words of James Carville’s famous political mantra for the 1992 Clinton campaign, “It’s The Economy Stupid!”

Suddenly this week, the President finally has this incredible revelation that he needs to place the issue of the economy, as well as attend to financial system reform, at the top if his agenda?  President Obama – how could you and all of these ostensibly intelligent people you surrounded yourself with have possibly missed that most salient and readily available information?  Why did you not immediately address the failure of our economic system in it’s present form to serve the interests of its citizens, and redress the ongoing transgressions by the men who were responsible for single-handedly wrecking the underpinnings of American Capitalism?  Why did you not implement substantial changes in how our economy is managed by imposing strict accountability, transparency and limitations on how the banking industry operated?  Why did you trust that these financial terrorists would not not rob the national treasury for their own personal gain, instead turning a blind eye to their obvious avarice and indifference to the economic welfare of the country?   Why did you not instruct Tim Geithner and the Treasury Department to direct the lending institutions to focus all of that available financial capital at shoring-up businesses and home values in order to preserve the essential assets so critical to the future of the American people, instead of bailing out these corrupt and incompetent financial giants?  Why did you not utilize the available “bully pulpit” to chastise both your party and the Republicans for their unwillingness to use their legislative powers to immediately reign in these predatory financial giants, because of the “river of dirty money” (campaign contributions) running through Washington, D.C.?

Instead, you choose to ignore the over-arching importance of these matters, and wasted all of your hard-earned political capital by rubber-stamping the bailouts, and then embarking on an agenda of reforming an equally complex and failed health care system – a pathway that was historically fraught with political pitfalls and epic battles against powerful wealthy corporate interests.   Anyone studying the history of American health care reform would know that simple fact.

Now, before any of you Conservatives start hooting and hollering in celebration of my criticism of the President, or my ”concession” regarding his obvious failures, let me inform you that your intellectual dishonesty for the past decade has been nothing short of shameful.  Lest you think you are blameless, your willful ignorance of, as well as refusal to admit, the abysmal failure of your leaders, party, spokespersons, and Conservative media to improve the status of this country and its people - particularly Bush, Cheney, Palin, McCain, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News, etc. - is completely reprehensible, and gives you no standing to believe that you have something to crow about.

You don’t.

In fact, part and parcel of Obama’s inability to effectuate change has been due to the ”political noise” you either countenenced or participated in during the election campaign in the Fall of 2008 as a substitute for reasoned and measured dialogue about what was wrong with this country.  Labeling him a Muslim – when nothing is further from the truth, and cheering on those who claimed that he was “palling around with terrorists“, willfully distracted the American public from what was really at stake for the future of our country.  Many of you continued to increase the sound of that chorus to a deafening roar after he was elected with the most utter nonsense – first claiming he was not a citizen in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, as well as charging that he is a Socialist, hellbent on destroying the foundations of this nation, when in fact his predecessors that you supported, as well as their corrupt political business cronies, had already virtually accomplished that objective. 

In so much as you have fostered and perpetuated these opinions by either expressed belief or passive silence as to the truth, you are partially responsible for the demise of this republic.  Your behavior is utterly Un-American.  It is an absolute certainty that history will be far less kind to you than it will be to President Obama.

Shame on you.

And if you happen to choke to death on your teabags, oh well . . .

So President Obama chides the bankers on CBS’s 60 Minutes Sunday night, referring to them as “fat cats”.  On Monday morning he meets with them  – at least the ones who showed up – to tell them they need to step-up their lending.  What was their response?

Some of those in attendance said the government should “cut the red tape” in lending requirements for Small Business Administration (SBA) loans.

WTF?

We just gave these guys trillions of dollars interest-free in March of this year to lend back to Americans in order to prop up the economy.  Then they hoard the money, investing it in everything from bonds (very conservative returns), to credit card holders (then turned around and raised interest rates to all-time highs), to high-risk derivatives – you know, those insane and arcane financial instruments that broke the casino the last go around.  Thereafter, they paid themselves handsome bonuses for their genius (listen, give me a boatload of $$$ interest free and I can make a profit on it investing in high-grade bonds – the “spread” of 2% interest is a no-brainer; let’s see, 2% of $35 Billion – wow, nice freakin’ bonus, Lance; you are such a genius). 

Now when pressed to lend the money, they have the audacity to suggest that the government-backed SBA loans are the way to go about fixing this mess.  Let’s see.  I will loan the money you just gave me interest free to small businesses.  You guarantee 80% of the loan.  I get the borrower to pledge his business as an asset to back up the remaining 20%, of course, making sure that the appraised fire-sale value of the “hard assets” – real estate, equipment, etc, far exceeds the other 20% of the total loan.   Even if the deal goes South, the government pays me 80% of the money back (which they gave to me interest free, anyway), and I sell the business for 20 cents on the dollar and recover the other 20%.

What a deal!  I take NO risk, and get all of the rewards.  Isn’t Capitalism great?

Mr. President.  Wake up!!!  These guys are sandbagging us.  Good will has left the building.  The last remnants of Capitalism are gone, buried along side Adam Smith, who is rolling over in his grave as I speak.

P.S.  For those not familiar with Adam Smith, he was the author of Wealth of Nations – the book written in 1776 where he first forwarded the economic theory of Capitalism.