Obama's economic advisers' new slogan seems to be: CEO's are the salt of the earth, CEO's must be cultivated and calmed.   His advisers must be eating too much ice cream and having brain freezes.

 

What the hell is going on now?   Two steps forward, two steps back?  How deep in the pockets of corporatism are Furman and Goolsbee, his top advisers?   

 

CEO's and their ilk took advantage of the Bush regime's no regulation on corporations and big business policy and created the mortgage debacle, the economic catastrophe, the credit card fiasco, the job offshoring disaster, the American manufacturing calamity, the health care crisis inflicted on regular hardworking people in the US.

 

From David Sirota: "Everyone rest easy - we can all breathe a deep sigh of relief, as the Obama campaign aggressively moves to court the CEO vote, according to today's Wall Street Journal:

Jason Furman, Barack Obama's economic-policy director, is spending this weekend in the tony Hamptons outside New York, as will many top Wall Street executives. But he won't be relaxing. Instead he will be explaining the Democrat's tax policies in small business gatherings and celebrity-studded fund-raisers. Another top Obama adviser, University of Chicago Professor Austan Goolsbee, just returned from Jackson Hole, Wyo., to chat up other business executives and big donors. The campaign for the CEO vote is heating up. With increasing attention on the economy, the presidential candidates are trying to wrap themselves in business's embrace by wooing some of the best-known chief executives.

"Whew! I know I'm really relieved, because millionaire CEOs are the most important constituency that will decide the election in places in working-class bastions like Ohio."

And from Jonathan Tasini at Working Life: "I am not surprised by this but it makes me wonder why there is this general whispering campaign that critics of Sen. Obama's economic proposals should keep quiet. The Wall Street Journal this morning:

The campaign for the CEO vote is heating up. With increasing attention on the economy, the presidential candidates are trying to wrap themselves in business's embrace by wooing some of the best-known chief executives.

In the Obama campaign's latest effort to calm business, its economists are providing specific numbers for his proposed tax increases on investment income and payroll taxes -- essentially smaller increases than many had feared based on his campaign rhetoric. Messrs. Furman and Goolsbee now say Sen. Obama would raise capital-gains tax rates from the current 15% to 20% for families making more than $250,000. Payroll taxes would also rise for that income group to a range between 2% and 4% (to be borne by the employee and employer), but the increase wouldn't take effect for at least 10 years.

" The rich are getting away with hundreds of billions of dollars and there is a campaign to "calm business" about raising taxes on corporations? Give me a friggin' break.

Business had argued that a big tax increase would discourage investment and increase costs, and Republicans -- including Sen. John McCain -- had criticized Sen. Obama's tax plan as being harmful to the economy.

 "Haven't we heard this song before? Oh, no, don't raise the minimum wage because it will cost  jobs--and that turns out not to be true. Oh, no, don't raise taxes...even though corporate taxes are pretty darn low (not to mention the fact that most corporations aren't apparently paying taxes). C'mon...

"But, what's most interesting is the notion that, with the economy in trouble, it's the CEO vote that's being sought? Huh. Let me think about this for a moment: wasn't it the CEOs of the banks (Robert Rubin, please take a bow) who destroyed hundreds of billions of dollars in the mortgage crisis? Wasn't it the CEOs of the auto companies who foolishly sat around selling SUVs and ceding the market to Japanese hybrids? Hasn't it been the CEOs of American-based companies who, while taking millions for themselves, have beaten down wages so badly that workers are leveraged to the hilt and, now that their homes have declined in value, can't buy the very products companies are trying to sell?  (Underline added.)

"I mean, I could go on. But, the CEOs are not the ones who will save the country. They destroyed it. Rather than embrace them, give them a kick in the pants and start rewriting the rules of the economy."

Obama needs to get wise.  Instead of Furman and Goolsbee, it should be Dean Baker, James Galbreath, Joseph Stiglitz, Jared Bernstein, and other economists at the Economic Policy Institute and Center for Economic and Policy Research, for example  Right now his advisers are cultivating those who caused the catastrophes.  That's like giving matches to arsonists.