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Obama's Deregulation Dance With Wall Street
By Laura Flanders
January 19, 2011
With a new Republican Congress falling all over itself to hand corporations whatever they want, it was only a matter of time before some politician turned up in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, breathlessly describing the "dazzling" and "path-breaking" nature of the free market, and vowing to get rid of regulations that have placed "unreasonable" burdens on businesses.
We just didn't think it would be Barack Obama.
Obama's words at times echoed US Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue, who called for regulations to be "swept away"—and who cheered the hiring of Wall Streeter Bill Daley as White House chief of staff.
And the point is, while there are always "dumb" rules you can dig up and make fun of, what's raging in the United States isn't a political fight over dumb stuff. What's raging right now is a very real fight over government, and its role in protecting the public and the public sphere, and the relative power of private profiteers. And in that fight, well, the argument is part of the point.
Read the full article at:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/157884/obamas-deregulation-dance-wall-street