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SMALL BUSINESS
Obama Says Economic Disaster Averted
By CHARLES BABINGTON
, AP
posted: 122 DAYS 5 HOURS AGO
filed under: Financial Crisis
L'AQUILA, Italy (July 10) - Lasting worldwide recovery "is still a ways off," President Barack Obama declared Friday, but he also said at the conclusion of a global summit that a disastrous economic collapse apparently has been averted.
Obama said world leaders had taken significant measures to address economic, environmental and global security issues.
"Reckless actions by a few have fueled a recession that spans the globe," Obama said of the meltdown that began in the United States with a tumble in housing prices and drastic slowing of business lending. The downturn now threatens superpowers and emerging nations alike.
Obama urged national leaders to unite behind a global recovery plan that includes stricter financial regulation and sustained stimulus spending.
"The only way forward is through shared and persistent effort to combat threats to our peace, our peace, our prosperity and our common humanity wherever they may exist. None of this will be easy," Obama told a news conference at the end of the Group of Eight summit of major economic powers.
The president rejected suggestions that the summit fell short of expectations by failing to call for tough new sanctions on Iran for its crackdown on democracy advocates after its disputed presidential election.
"What we wanted is exactly what we got
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2009-07-10 10:17:12
COMMENTS ( 62 )
THURSDAY APRIL 30, 2009 05:35 EDT
Top Senate Democrat: bankers...... "own"....... the U.S. Congress.
Sen. Dick Durbin, on a local Chicago radio station this week, blurted
out an obvious truth about Congress that, despite being blindingly
obvious, is rarely spoken:
"And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a
banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most
powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."
The blunt acknowledgment that the same banks that caused the
financial crisis "own" the U.S. Congress -- according to one of that
institution's most powerful members -- demonstrates just how extreme
this institutional corruption is.
The ownership of the federal government by banks and other large
corporations is effectuated in literally countless ways, none more
effective than the endless and increasingly sleazy overlap between
government and corporate officials.
Here is just one random item this week announcing a couple of
standard personnel moves:
Former Barney Frank staffer now top Goldman Sachs lobbyist
Goldman Sachs' new top lobbyist was recently the top staffer to Rep.
Barney Frank, D-Mass., on the House Financial Services Committee
chaired by Frank. Michael Paese, a registered lobbyist for the
Securities Industries and Financial Markets Association since he left
Frank's committee in September, will join Goldman as director of
government affairs, a role held last year by former Tom Daschle
intimate, Mark Patterson, now the chief of staff at the Treasury
Department. This is not Paese's first swing through the Wall
Street-Congress revolving door: he previously worked at JP Morgan and
Mercantile Bankshares, and in between served as senior minority
counsel at the Financial Services Committee.
So: Paese went from Chairman Frank's office to be the top lobbyist at
Goldman, and shortly before that, Goldman dispatched Paese's
predecessor, close Tom Daschle associate Mark Patterson, to be Chief
of Staff to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, himself a protege of
former Goldman CEO Robert Rubin and a virtually wholly owned
subsidiary of the banking industry. That's all part of what Desmond
Lachman -- American Enterprise Institute fellow, former chief
emerging market strategist at Salomon Smith Barney and top IMF
official (no socialist he) -- recently described as "Goldman Sachs's
seeming lock on high-level U.S. Treasury jobs."