Why the Left is Dead

The following paragraph is quoted by Digby. It is taken from Michael Hirsh.

There has been, in recent days, a groundswell of support for Elizabeth Warren, one of the top candidates to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. One less-noted reason for all this outspoken fervor is that, for many liberal critics, Barack Obama’s economic team is something of an intellectual cabal. Starting with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and chief economic adviser Larry Summers, the senior members of this team are all people “who have Bob Rubin on their speed dial,” as one of these critics told me. They are, in other words, part of the deregulatory brigade led by then–treasury secretary Rubin in the 1990s who helped set the stage for the financial disaster by giving Wall Street most of what it wanted, whether it was Glass-Steagall repeal or reduced regulatory oversight of derivatives trading.

The degree of jeering and bad mouthing in the post is as bad as done by Breibart and Berg. You read that Geithner and Summers essentially take their orders from Rubin. The three are a cabal, in other words they are secretly united in a plot, with the big banks,supposedly against the American people. They deregulate the financial system by Rubin at the, implied the lefts biggest enemy ever Bill Clinton. They eleiminated the Glass Steagall act and set loose the wild derivatives market.

Finally we know who the original sinners are. Reagan of course didn't do any deregulation, as we all remember from history. Bush II was a great president with a decent, may be even progressive, economic policy. Glass Steagall wasn't almost an empty shell when finally removed from the books.

Our left has Reagan and Bush as heroes and Rubin as Satan. Somerby hammers home the same message daily, there is nothing new here. But Digby's post is full with name calling, an enormous amount of falsehoods and above all a moronic political judgement. After all, for the left to relieve Reagan and Bush of responsibility for the financial disaster and put it on the Democrats is suicide.