Clueless? Not so much!

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Paul Krugman thinks Obama is clueless:

I�m with Simon Johnson here: how is it possible, at this late date, for Obama to be this clueless?

The lead story on Bloomberg right now contains excerpts from an interview with Business Week which tells us:

President Barack Obama said he doesn�t �begrudge� the
$17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive
Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group
Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a
question that while $17 million is �an extraordinary amount of money�
for Main Street, �there are some baseball players who are making more
than that and don�t get to the World Series either, so I�m shocked by
that as well.�

�I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,� Obama
said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg
BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. �I, like most of
the American people, don�t begrudge people success or wealth. That is
part of the free- market system.�

Obama sought to combat perceptions that his administration is
anti-business and trumpeted the influence corporate leaders have had on
his economic policies. He plans to reiterate that message when he
speaks to the Business Roundtable, which represents the heads of many
of the biggest U.S. companies, on Feb. 24 in Washington.

Sorry Paul - Obama is anything but clueless.  This is simply his reaction to the recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to spend unlimited sums to influence elections.  Real progressive Democrats cannot win.  Those who want to clamp down on corporations will simply be outspent to defeat.  The media is owned by large corporations that will always favor corporatocracy over populism.  The Teabagger movement is for the most part an AstroTurf movement funded by anti populist corporate interests.

Bill Clinton realized this when he created the DLC - if you want to win you must pander to those with the money.  Obama realized that those with the money can spend even more of it now.  The system of the greedy oligarchs and those seeking empire cannot be sustained and will eventually collapse as such systems have done historically. Until then welcome to this Brave New World.