Recent Secret History

With his family by his side, Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. in Washington, DC, January 20, 2009. Master Sgt. Cecilio Ricardo, US Air Force.

President Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009, arguably the first president in the history of the country since George Washington to enter office with a clear mandate, even without winning a landslide vote.

January 21, 2009, one day after taking office, millions are out of work, losing their homes, a huge portion of their retirement savings, and have very little hope. Not too many US citizens had been around to remember the Great Depression, but many were now able to identify. These were Obama’s appointees to the financial sector of his administration almost as soon as he was sworn in:

• Secretary of the Treasury: Timothy Geithner, former president of the New York Fed, one of the top financial people in the world responsible for red-flagging Wall Street. If he couldn’t see that financial crisis coming, how would he see a future crisis coming? And among Geithner’s decisions as head of the NY Fed—he helped design the $30 billion bailout of Bear Stearns for their mortgage securities fiasco.

• Geithner’s Chief of Staff: Mark Patterson, former Goldman lobbyist.

• One of the administration’s top economic advisers until 2010 was Lewis Sachs, former Chairman of the Mariner Investment Group (Tricadia), a company that allegedly sold CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) and then bet against these mortgage-based securities.

• The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is an independent agency that regulates the futures and options markets. Who did Obama pick as its head? Gary Gensler, also a former employee of Goldman. More importantly, though, the president chose one of those responsible for allowing financial institutions to deal in derivatives (mortgage securities) by promoting the passage of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000, following the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, exempting these over-the-counter derivatives from government regulation.

President Barack Obama talks with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner at the conclusion of a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House. Nov. 4, 2010. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.

• Securities and Exchange Commission: FDR established this federal agency to regulate the stock market and the companies that trade on them. In other words, the SEC looks after the entire securities industry. Who did Obama select to head the commission? Mary Shapiro, the head of FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Agency). From the FINRA website: “FINRA’s mission is to safeguard the investing public against fraud and bad practices. We pursue that mission by writing and enforcing rules and regulations for every single brokerage firm and broker in the United States, and by examining broker-dealers for compliance with our own rules, federal securities laws and rules of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board.” Obama picked the head of the agency that was unsuccessful in protecting investors prior to the financial crisis to be the head of the commission that would regulate the stock market for possibly the next eight years.

• Former Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Larry Summers: his notoriety with the 2008 financial collapse was that, at the turn of this century, he was responsible, along with Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, for spearheading the passage of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, which as you already know made it legal for companies to deal in derivatives, causing the housing bubble and subsequent massive foreclosures. Why did the president of the United States choose one of the men responsible for the 2008 financial debacle as his chief economic advisor? Why didn’t Obama choose someone like Brooksley Born, former head of the CFTC who wanted derivatives to be regulated and who was ousted by pressure precipitated by both Greenspan and Summers? Or Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren, whose life work has been bankruptcy law and fighting for the middle class and consumer rights. Now a senator from the state of Massachusetts, Time magazine has called her “a new sheriff of Wall Street.”

Not surprisingly, neither Congress nor the Department of Justice made any arrests, and no firms were prosecuted for financial fraud concerning the 2008 financial disaster. Millions of Americans lost their homes, their retirement money, their pride. Not one responsible person paid the price for this travesty and tragedy. That is Obama’s legacy.

Although 94 percent of Americans polled in a June 2017 Quinnipiac University poll answered “yes” to the question, “Do you support or oppose requiring background checks for all gun buyers,”¹⁶² the NRA has arguably never been more powerful. Immediately after the Parkland, Florida school shooting in February 2018, NRA head Wayne LaPierre said, “If these so-called European socialists take over the House and the Senate and, God forbid, they win the White House again our American freedoms could be lost and our country will be changed forever, and the first to go will be the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.”

The Second Amendment: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

What if the founding fathers were way ahead of their time and formulated a Second Amendment like this: “A well-regulated highway system, being necessary to the welfare of America’s transportation structure and economy, the right of the people to keep and drive automobiles.”

Is it feasible that if LaPierre was the head of the fictional National Automobile and Drivers Association that the NADA would be against states registering each and every automobile and issuing license plates for those vehicles, for every driver to take both a written and a driving test to make certain that they can drive properly and know the law of the road, that owners must have their vehicles regularly inspected so our roads are as safe as can be, that speed limits should be set so that drivers don’t drive at excessive speeds on inferior roads or in densely populated areas, that seat belts should be worn for driver and passenger safety, and that drivers must have their headlights on at night so they can see properly. And potentially worst of all—will the Second Amendment be in jeopardy if drivers aren’t allowed to drive under the influence?

In 2018, according to many polls, two out of three American citizens, for the most part, favor the Second Amendment, yet want the necessary controls to the ownership of guns so that our workplaces and schools are safer.