Web Letters: Obama and the Big Dogs

Among other questions, who will lend the money to our government? Candidates include the big banks or the Chinese.

John D. Froelich

Upper Darby, PA

Obama is walking a tightrope. He knows history and the challenge to truly change this situation. We are fools to believe his presidency has the power to seize control from the invisible International Central Bankers (e.g., "Federal" Reserve, among others) who have ruled the world for centuries. Those who have tried, here and abroad, fail or fail to live--look at our presidents Garfield and Kennedy. ("JFK?" you ask? Search EO 11110, Executive Order 11110.) We all have our price, and Big Money has enough cash to buy anyone for anything--and so they rule.

Our best hope exists right now as awareness continues to grow about who these people are and how they operate. Our only chance of success is to stoke this fire to create an overwhelming populist demand, supported by our president, to strip these people of their power--Wall Street is a modern-day aristocracy similar to that which the French rebelled against in the eighteenth century. Let's redirect the foolhardy "rage" of today's "Tea Parties" toward Big Money instead of at a president who struggles against these forces in an effort to better represent We the People. Sing the song "Big Money": "We'll never be free until we break the bank!"

Only our numbers can overpower them. Our only chance for real change is to oppose Big Money with a force they cannot buy! Like the demands of an overwhelming number of ordinary people who are "mad as hell...," for example.

They have maintained their power largely with control of media. The Internet, the current crisis and our progressive-thinking president provide an opportunity never before available in a situation they cannot totally control. Let's work it!

Malcolm Clark

Occidental, CA

Obama has a clear choice. Will he side with the citizens of the United States of America or the very culprits that caused our current crisis, the "big dogs of Wall Street"?

Will Obama condone the looting of our treasury to save the very actors whose greed, incompetence and fraud caused this economic catastrophe?

Obama has a clear choice, it couldn't be clearer: Wall Street or Main Street. The people or the perpetrators. His choice so far: the "big dogs of Wall Street" and the looting of our treasury.

Michael McKinlay

Hercules, CA

"The bankers think they have the president cornered. His rescue plan cannot possibly succeed without much more money--hundreds of billions more--that Congress will be extremely reluctant to provide."

To prevent future occurrences of financial meltdowns, Obama has to nationalize the US Federal Reserve. Few people recognize that the Fed is a private corporation whose profits flow to its shareholders and not to the US Treasury. Big banks are not the problem. That the US has a central bank is not the problem. The problem is that the US Federal Reserve is a privately owned bank with a monopoly on the creation of money. Greenspan knew perfectly well what he was doing and whom his policies would enrich.

Back in the early 1960s, Bank of Canada governor James Coyne and Prime Minister John Diefenbaker had a ferocious debate that spilled out of the confines of the committee rooms and onto the front pages of the newspapers. The Bank of Canada was trying to put itself apart from the Government of Canada in much the same way that the US Federal Reserve is in relation to the US government. At stake was the issue of who sets interest rates and monetary policy? The leader of the House of Commons or the Governor of the Bank of Canada? After the dust cleared the governor of the Bank of Canada was firmly in the grip of the minister of finance. The elected government can override the decisions of the bovernor; and moreover, all net revenues accrue to the state.

Peter Lewycky

Toronto, Canada

If these banks are not regulated, they will eventually fail. The "managers" of these institutions are remarkably stupid and need help crossing the road. Like children, they need the structure and discipline of law and regulation. If they are too big to fail, they are too big to exist, and should be broken up through antitrust laws.

Obama likes to be the "nice guy" above the fray and let subordinates carry the water. The torture probes will be handled by the attorney general and Congress. For their own survival, members of Congress better take on the economy, because the president's "advisers" are part of the problem.

Pervis James Casey

Riverside, CA

Oh, please. Obama works for the Big Dogs of Wall Street. All you need to do is take a quick look at his campaign contributors, cabinet choices, and bank bailouts of the past three months.

Why do you stay in such deep denial? It's not balls Obama lacks--he's just doing his job. Carrying water for the big dogs.

The ones with no balls are We, (the group formerly known as) The People--who refuse to see the truth and act on it, and The Nation and ostrichophiles like Greider, who do more harm than good by writing this stuff, instead of telling like it is.

David Rubinson

San Francisco, CA

President Obama has placed familiar faces and a favorable plan into place for Wall Street because the alternative would be a complete system failure. A failure precipated as much by a vote of no confidence by the Wall Street power center as by falling financial dominoes here and abroad.

The bailout and stimulus programs are the traditional Keynesian policies, though their magnitude is unprecedented, utilized to shock the patient back to life. If these methods and economic team should fail, after a reasonable time, then a new team with less orthodox methods must be tried until the patient is fully rehabilitated. Let's hope the bench team has depth.

Since everyone is so impatient, has anyone established the number of quarters, innings, rounds, holes or sets for this game?

Sioan Stephen Bethel

Brooklyn, NY