We seem to have a paralyzed Democratic elected leadership in Washington.  Of course, what else can be expected with a DINO president and majority on Capitol Hill.

Instead of strong solutions for the unemployment crisis, tens of millions of jobless people get rhetoric from the president who fobbed off the massive double digit disaster to a do nothing Senate. 

Rather than leading the way, Obama and his administration, especially his Wall Street controlled economic team, seem to have joined the GOP to create an artificial deficit crisis, acting more like Reagan than FDR.

As Dean Baker wrote: "The reality is that we have an unemployment crisis today, not a deficit crisis. The only crisis related to the deficit is that people with vast sums of money (i.e. the people who wrecked the economy) have been able to use that money to make the deficit into a crisis." 

Instead of powerful effective solutions to end the destructive ongoing corrupt, laissez faire practices of the Wall Street financial industry casino, we get namby-pamby half measures and milquetoast follow through even on those.

Where is the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act, a simple, yet important first step in strongly regulating Wall Street that caused this economic meltdown? 

Nowhere, as Obama and his Wall Street supporting administration try to polish turds by calling their weak, mediocre "regulatory" plans of the financial industry strong and effective.

Pam Martens writes at Counterpunch: "...."it’s time to take Wall Street literally: they’ve made it abundantly clear they have an insatiable appetite for killing things: the housing market, the financial system, the economy, reform legislation, the next generation’s future.

"Wall Street is so steeped in destruction that the symbols of death are everywhere.  Wall Street calls the big newspaper ads they take out to herald the launch of their market offerings a “tombstone.” (To understand how appropriate that is, consider the billions in bond and stock offerings they raise for Big Tobacco.)  What does Wall Street call the completion of a buy or sell order: an “execution.” (Think of how many derivative trades they “executed” for the now crippled, life support patients Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG; or the off balance sheet vehicles they created for Enron, WorldCom, and dozens of now bankrupt companies.)

"Until a President comes along with a genuine will to deal with the truly rapacious nature of Wall Street, these destructive forces will continue.

"President Obama’s latest Wall Street reform plan to bar commercial banks from owning private equity funds or hedge funds and banning proprietary trading for the benefit of their own firm constitutes needed reform toward unrigging the markets.  But the proposal neglects Wall Street’s most serious threat to the economy.  It’s the commercial banks’ ownership of investment banks and brokerage firms that’s killing innovation and job growth in America."

But is appears that this deliberately woodenheaded so called Democratic president continues to purposely not get it.   And the following is just one example of his wrongheaded decisions.

Martens continues:

"The February 15, 1999 cover of Time magazine lauded Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers as The Committee to Save the World.  We now know this was really The Committee to Slave the World.  The economic challenges the world now confronts were of their making; together, of course, with some well placed Washington and Wall Street cronies.

"There has been this intellectual dishonesty and revisionist history suggesting no one could have seen this [economic disaster] coming. Not only did lots of people see it coming but on June 25 and June 26, 1998 a steady stream of public-minded citizens walked through the stately doors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and testified that repealing the Glass-Steagall Act and allowing commercial banks to merge with Wall Street firms was a preposterously bad idea and would lead to economic ruin.  Why is our President turning to Summers and Rubin for advice instead of the people who got it right? (Underline added?)

"President Obama has now anointed Neal Wolin to join the New Committee to Save the World along with himself and former Fed Chair Paul Volcker.  Who is Neal Wolin? He was confirmed as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury on May 19, 2009.

"In the Clinton administration, Wolin was general counsel to Lawrence Summers, a key proponent of repealing the Glass-Steagall Act.  According to the New York Times, Mr. Summers earned $5.2 million in 2008 working one day a week for the hedge fund, D.E. Shaw & Company, while simultaneously advising Obama.  After leaving government, Wolin worked for Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. for eight years. According to BusinessWeek, if you add up Wolin’s cash compensation, restricted stock awards, options, and other compensation, he made $3.4 million his last year at Hartford in 2008. 

"Robert Scheer wrote the following about Wolin at the San Francisco Chronicle on November 19, 2009:

“Wolin, Geithner and Summers were all proteges of Robert Rubin, who, as Clinton's treasury secretary, was the grand author of the strategy of freeing Wall Street firms from their Depression-era constraints. It was Wolin who, at Rubin's behest, became a key force in drafting the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which ended the barrier between investment and commercial banks and insurance companies, thus permitting the new financial behemoths to become too big to fail. Two stunning examples of such giants that had to be rescued with public funds are Citigroup bank, where Rubin went to ‘earn’ $120 million after leaving the Clinton White House, and the Hartford Insurance Co., where Wolin landed after he left Treasury.” 

Obama, unfortunately, continue to exhibit DINO bona fides....not an FDR, Truman, or Kennedy but a depressing imitation of Nixon who,  though he did a few "good things", e. g. the EPA was created during his administration, overall did more harm than good to this country and its people.