Friday, January 7, 2011

Appointees: How Exciting! How Encouraging! Snore.

Dr. Kidglove, the elected head of the United States of Goldman Sachs, has filled two important vacancies on his White House staff.

I give you our London Correspondent, an expatriate Yank: 

I see that the Pres has chosen Larry Summers' replacement,  Sperling by name.  Currently working for Timmy Geithner and former consultant to Goldman Sachs. How exciting! How encouraging! Snore!

In 2008 ol' Gene was paid eight hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars. . .
. . . for part-time work . . .

. . .on a charity  project!

What planet would it be where somebody gets paid almost a million bucks in a single year for part-time work of any kind, never mind "charity" work? 

Wish I could ask Mr. Sperling how, in carrying out his new duties, he purges his mind of thoughts about whether his conduct in office might affect Goldman Sachs' willingness to put him back on the payroll in the future.

Even on a foggy day, the view from London obviously is more clear than that from, say, inside our infamous Beltway around Washington, DC.  No propagandist (journalists no longer exist inside the Beltway) for American media has been so perceptive in reporting on the Sperling appointment.

Expatriate Chicagoan that he is, Dr. Kidglove reached into the Windy City"s Daley dynasty to replace Rahm (F-Word) Emanuel as chief of staff. Bill Daley, brother of one Mayor Daley and son of another, is the appointee.

The same Bill Daley who, as Clinton's secretary of commerce, led efforts on behalf of the NAFTA treaty, which created the "great sucking sound" of American jobs being vacuumed out of the United States and into cheap-labor countries.

The same Bill Daley who opposed creating a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect mere citizens from being driven into bankruptcy by the predators of Wall Street.

The same Bill Daley who is on record as saying that the watered-down, Republicanized, pharmaceutical company-favoring, insurer-enriching,  barely-better-than-nothing health care bill is too far left.

The same Bill Daley who for seven years was a senior executive at JP Morgan Chase, the triple-A farm club of Goldman Sachs and the Too Biggest to Fail of all the Too Big to Fail banks that you and I bailed out with our hard-earned tax dollars.

My fellow Americans, assume The Position.