Rolling Stone says Obama sold out. Guess we're done with Goldman

Leading the search for the president's new economic team was his close friend and Harvard Law classmate Michael Froman, a high-ranking executive at Citigroup. During the campaign, Froman had emerged as one of Obama's biggest fundraisers, bundling $200,000 in contributions and introducing the candidate to a host of heavy hitters — chief among them his mentor Bob Rubin, the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs who served as Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. Froman had served as chief of staff to Rubin at Treasury, and had followed his boss when Rubin left the Clinton administration to serve as a senior counselor to Citigroup (a massive new financial conglomerate created by deregulatory moves pushed through by Rubin himself).

So on November 23rd, 2008, a deal is announced in which the government will bail out Rubin's messes at Citigroup with a massive buffet of taxpayer-funded cash and guarantees. It is a terrible deal for the government, almost universally panned by all serious economists, an outrage to anyone who pays taxes. Under the deal, the bank gets $20 billion in cash, on top of the $25 billion it had already received just weeks before as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. But that's just the appetizer. The government also agrees to charge taxpayers for up to $277 billion in losses on troubled Citi assets, many of them those toxic CDOs that Rubin had pushed Citi to invest in. No Citi executives are replaced, and few restrictions are placed on their compensation. It's the sweetheart deal of the century, putting generations of working-stiff taxpayers on the hook to pay off Bob Rubin's fuck-up-rich tenure at Citi. "If you had any doubts at all about the primacy of Wall Street over Main Street," former labor secretary Robert Reich declares when the bailout is announced, "your doubts should be laid to rest."

Ok. I will probably not read the article but how do they reconcile these two statements, which seems to undercut the whole argument:

"but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs."

"Leading the search for the president's new economic team was his close friend and Harvard Law classmate Michael Froman, a high-ranking executive at Citigroup. During the campaign, Froman had emerged as one of Obama's biggest fundraisers..."

we r all pwned by goldman.

malthus, the article is saying that Froman came in after the election. Read the article.

Taibbi is a bonehead, especially when he tries writing about Wall Street, but he mixes some good points in with all the other nonsense.

Reading political news in Rolling Stone is like reading it in the Village Voice, a waste of time. (Now, back in the days of Ｈｕｎｔｅｒ　Ｓ．　Ｔｈｏｍｐｓｏｎ，　ｔｈａｔ　ｗａｓ　ｄｉｆｆｅｒｅｎｔ）．

oof that article contains a lot of moronic generalizations.

"What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing."

What an unintentionally damning portrait of his supporters.

" Obama had a clear mandate to ... remake the entire structure of the American economy."

That statement is absurd. A "clear mandate" ...to "remake the entire structure"?

Actually Obama had the good fortune to be following the worst President in US history. And McCain picked an unqualified nutcase to be his running mate.

Anybody who was paying attention knew that Obama was drawing massive campaign donations from Wall Street. Its rather ridiculous to claim shock that he would hire some of those big donors after the campaign, like every other politician before him. Dog bites man.

I'm a huge fan of Barack Obama but I have been disappointed in his handling of this crisis. However, I console myself with thinking about McCain & Palin in the White House & remember that we did dodge a bullet.

Obama's inability to tame the Dems on the Hill is ruining his domestic agenda. This was predictable, and he should have been more forceful early on when he was so popular. The health bill is a total mess, which is too bad, because even the Republicans admit we need health reform.

Obama's favorability ratings are lower at this point in his presidency than... well, everybody else for the most part.

Carter, Clinton, both Bushes, etc.... all had better ratings.

I would not have called that. Gradual and continued sink, maybe, as he got stuck in the mud, but I did not see this big a drop (and I don't think he totally deserves it). Granted, health care wasn't done well, they've completely missed the boat on reforming Wall Street (the british are even kicking our asses there) and foreign policy of being nice... well, not playing out so great. And then even the stuff I didn't like that he promised - like the card check bill he WROTE - got dropped. He has to be pissing everyone off now.

But he needs to fix something fast or he's toast. I like the guy, but I think we have another Jimmy Carter brewing.

Regardless of my feeling on Obama, Rolling Stone magazine should stick to music.
Though of course they had a habit of bashing Led Zeppelin in the early days. Considering they are second to only the Beatles in album sales, they may not be too good at their day job either.

Completely inconcievable that one publication could have... well, multiple writers?1?!?

I mean, how does the NY Times write about cars or RE or business when they're only supposed to be writing about science?!?!?

Oy veh, my point was not to take Rolling Stones political "take" so seriously.

BTW, thought HBO's Generation Kill (Rolling Stone writer's view) was certainly entertaining.

BTW, Pres Obama's top contributors ...

University of California $1,591,395
Goldman Sachs $994,795
Harvard University $854,747
Microsoft Corp $833,617
Google Inc $803,436
Citigroup Inc $701,290
JPMorgan Chase & Co $695,132
Time Warner $590,084
Sidley Austin LLP $588,598
Stanford University $586,557
National Amusements Inc $551,683
UBS AG $543,219
Wilmerhale Llp $542,618
Skadden, Arps et al $530,839
IBM Corp $528,822
Columbia University $528,302
Morgan Stanley $514,881
General Electric $499,130
US Government $494,820
Latham & Watkins $493,835

jim, republicans admit we need health care reform, but they're unwilling to do a rat's ass thing to get it done now.

we can't continue to pay for 65% of the COBRA costs of unemployed workers, and we certainly can't afford to have millions of middle-aged people without coverage. if there's one thing that might have people going long pitchforks, as i've said before, it's seeing people we know die from a lack of medical care.

Republicans have submitted health care reform legislation proposals, but they won't go anywhere with the Democrats heavily controlling Congress.

Republican's would not have submitted a health care proposal of their own if it were not for the Democratic initiative. That said there are strong merits to many of the Republican proposals.

On an aside, I wonder if people have thought through the Democratic 55+year old opt in to medicare. How do we stop companies from either terminating employee health care coverage or paying the 55+ workers to go medicare route...I think the 55+opt in could very well be a Trojan horse public health care option.

somewhereelse said: "Obama's favorability ratings are lower at this point in his presidency than... well, everybody else for the most part."

Um, no.

From Gallup:
Obama: - 12/11/09: 50% approval
Reagan - 12/10/81: 47% approval
Clinton - 12/12/93: 51% approval

"""""But he needs to fix something fast or he's toast. I like the guy, but I think we have another Jimmy Carter brewing."""""

Yes, I remember hearing that Bill Clinton and Reagans (who all had very poor approvals...dipping into the 30s during their first years). Approval ratings are a stupid way to gauge reelection possibilities....especially this early.

With that said....politics is stupid. I try to stay out of it. Nothing ever changes...same ol' same ol'. I will never understand why people get to pent up when it comes to politics.

*yawn*

Riversider at it again. Please get a life.

Aboutready, the 2006 and 2008 elections have made Republicans start focusing on health care reforn, as well as the conservative think tanks, so the Dems deserve credit for all that, The problem is that the actual bill proposed is a mess for reasons laid out in many forums. The sensible thing to do would be a true bi-partisan scaled back proposal that included elements both sides can agree on.