In a long Q&A with the New York Times magazine set to be published this weekend, President Obama made a feeble attempt to reassure progressives about his Wall Street policies by telling us that Larry "On Wall Street's Payroll" Summers is the same as progressive Robert Reich:
Q: I want to talk broadly about policy. When you and I spoke during the campaign, you made it clear that you had thought a lot about the economic debates within the Clinton administration. And you said that you wanted to have a Robert Rubin type and a Robert Reich type having a vigorous debate in front of you...But in your inner circle, it really is dominated by Rubin protégés...
THE PRESIDENT: Not entirely. But, I mean, the fact is that Larry Summers right now is very comfortable making arguments, often quite passionately, that Bob Reich used to be making when he was in the Clinton White House...
Robert Reich recently gave Obama's economic team headed by Larry Summers an F for its management of the financial crisis. He's a solid progressive and Summers is a Wall Street hack. Obama trying to conflate the two - or reassure progressives that Summers is just like Reich - is insulting.
Obama goes on to insist that he's been a "ruthless pragmatist" on financial issues, but frankly while I see that on budget/spending issues, I don't see it when it comes to Wall Street. I think he and his team have been highly ideological market fundamentalists who are so ideologically zealous they are willing to give billions of dollars away to Wall Street and pray that speculators will turn things around on their own. That's not pragmatism, and it's probably not even only ideology - it's more like cultish theology.
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