The right-wing character of Obama's nominees is described by the media under the approving labels of "centrist", "moderate", and--most of all--"pragmatic." This terminology signifies that the incoming Obama team consists entirely of individuals who pass muster with the corporate-financial elite. There is not a whiff of genuine oppositional sentiment, let alone political radicalism, among the lot of them...
Obama postured as the most antiwar of the major candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, and owed his narrow victory over Hillary Clinton in large measure to the support among youth and students mobilized on the basis of opposition to the war in Iraq. He has now decided, however, to retain the chief administrator of Bush's war policies. [Robert] Gates was installed at the Pentagon in December 2006 and oversaw the Bush "surge" of 30,000 troops into Iraq, as well as a continuation of the war in Afghanistan.
Geithner is moving up from the number three position in the Bush administration's financial bailout squad, where he served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and worked with outgoing Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Geithner's reward for the collapse on Wall Street, where he was the chief day-to-day government monitor of the financial markets, is to be promoted to the topmost policy-making position...
The bipartisan consensus driving the approval of the Obama cabinet was summed up aptly enough in a satirical column by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, who described Geithner's appearance before the Senate Finance Committee under the headline, "The Nomination That's Too Big to Fail."
Under conditions of a mounting financial crisis which has shocked and frightened the corporate elite, nothing must stand in the way of putting in place the personnel and policies needed to provide an ever-expanding government bailout to Wall Street.
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