"Some major financial institutions, such as Bank of America and Citigroup, are what Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls “zombie banks.” They live as private entities only because of the endless infusion of government funds that swamp their private stock market equity value.

"Despite this quasi-nationalization, the Obama administration did not initially demand equity shares and, thus, majority management control in these banks. And after the stock market reacted negatively to an April 19 New York Times report that the administration was considering coverting government-owned bank warrants (essentially loans) to common stock, the proposal has gone unmentioned. But even going through with this measure (which would shore up the banks’ balance sheets) doesn’t mean the government will demand control of the banks’ management.

"Federal regulators are doing their best to hide the dire situation of our megabanks, thus delaying official acknowledgment of their insolvency. The regulators have let banks off the hook, sparing them from having to “mark to market” declining assets while allowing them to use the declining prices of their bonds (which will have to be paid off in full if held to maturity) to lower their total liabilities. Thus, the recent quarterly reports of bank profits are largely accounting fictions.

"The era of deregulatory free-market mania is crashing down upon us. We must revive the capacity of democratic governments to regulate the economy to serve people’s needs rather than the speculative desires of corporate elites to recover from the current global economic nightmare."

Glenn Greenwald at Salon wrote this weekend about Obama's flip-flops and the parsing done by some unthinking, knee jerk Obama supporters.

"Among progressives, Democrats, liberals, Obama supporters and the like, there seems to be some debate about the extent to which Obama deserves criticisms for what he has done thus far in the realm of civil liberties, restoration of Constitutional principles, and reversing the severe imbalance between "security" and liberties -- major planks of his two-year-long campaign and among the most frequent weapons used to criticize the Bush presidency.  On that topic, here is the first paragraph of this New York Times article this morning by David Sanger, summing everything up:

"President Obama’s decisions this week to retain important elements of the Bush-era system for trying terrorism suspects and to block the release of pictures showing abuse of American-held prisoners abroad are the most graphic examples yet of how he has backtracked, in substantial if often nuanced ways, from the approach to national security that he preached as a candidate, and even from his first days in the Oval Office.

"What would it say about a person who spent the last seven years vehemently criticizing those policies to suddenly decide that the same policies were perfectly fine or not particularly bothersome when Obama adopts them?  How could that be justified?  What should one say about a person who vehemently objected to X when Bush did it, but then suddenly found ways to defend or mitigate X when Obama does it?  Just re-read that first paragraph from the NYT article today. What should a rational person say in response to what it describes?