Business as usual for Obama?
President-Elect Barack Obama and Vice President-Elect Joe Biden are wasting no time assembling an economic team to face the financial crisis. They are also wasting no time in following the usually order of politics; snuggling up nice and close to heads of big business.
Barak Obama and Joe Biden have formed their Transition Economic Advisory Board including leaders of business, government and academia and met Friday to discuss steps required to heal the economy with all its current problems, which they will soon inherit.
The big names in big business included Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the world, via speakerphone, Eric Schmidt (Chairman and CEO, Google), William Daley (Chairman of the Midwest, JP Morgan Chase), Anne Mulcahy (Chairman and CEO, Xerox), Richard Parsons (Chairman of the Board, Time Warner), Penny Pritzker (CEO, Classic Residence by Hyatt).
Why are so many capitalist heads present? Obama could be taking President Clinton’s approach and surrounding himself with intellectual men with varying perspectives in order to come up with the best solution (unlike President Bush who surrounds himself only with a select group of men i.e. Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.).
In fact, many of Clinton’s men were present at the meeting including William Daley, Robert Rubin, Robert Reich, Lawrence Summers and Laura Tyson.
Perhaps the big heads of business will attempt to talk since into this big-government president-elect. “Let the markets correct themselves naturally. Letting the housing prices run their natural course (in this case lowered prices) will allow the supply and demand to equalize and find the new equilibrium. ,” the business men may argue.
And they could be right. Better this than a long drawn out affair akin the the Great Depression caused by heavy government intervention that prevented the markets to self-correct and end the crisis in a quick manner. Sadly, some in the housing industry will get burned, but thats better than the whole economy burning to pieces like we are seeing.
We should not not forget all the people Obama needs to ‘return the favor’, apart from the big names listed above. Obama’s top 10 Corporate PAC contributors for his campaign are all major banking institutions. According to The Center for Responsive Politics, aided by Matt Collins Obama’s major contributers include:
Goldman Sachs $739,521, UBS AG $419,550, Lehman Brothers $391,774, Citigroup Inc $492,548, Morgan Stanley $341,380, Latham & Watkins $328,879, Google Inc $487,355, JPMorgan Chase & Co $475,112, Sidley Austin LLP $370,916, Skadden, Arps et al $360,409.
More bailouts anyone?
Nearly every politician in office have people they need to please and debts they have to pay. Let’s not forget Barak Obama is a politician as well. He scratched a lot of backs to get to the most powerful position in the world, when will he begin to return those favors?