Abu Wabu

Power Line contributor Hillsdale College Professor Paul Rahe comments on the "grave misgivings" developing among Obama's group of high-level economic and finance advisers, who are now being ignored by the man who sought their cover during the financial crisis:

In Tuesday's New York Post, Charles Gasparino reports that, although they will not admit anything of the sort in public, people like Morgan Stanley's John Mack, BlackRock's Larry Fink, Greg Fleming (once at Merrill Lynch), JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon, and Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein, who backed Obama at the time of the financial crisis last Fall, are now, in private, expressing grave misgivings.

Rahe counsels all the players named in Gasparino's report to do the right thing:

At some point, if these men have any self-respect, they will have to separate themselves from the current administration. At the time of the campaign, there were plenty of indications of Obama's radicalism. But the Democrats on Wall Street and many of our leading economists chose to look the other way. Now a number of the latter find themselves associated with an administration that cares far less about American prosperity than about rearranging economic, social, and political relations in the country to their own liking.

Here is a question to ponder. If Barack Obama had a fully free hand, what would he do? I suggest that we should pay close attention to developments over the last few years in Venezuela - for the direction in which Obama's proposals point is the one followed by Hugo Chavez. That he admires what Chavez has done is evident from the fact that he has lent Chavez a hand in his attempt to export the Venezuelan revolution to the Honduras.

This is truly a grave omen for the future, news only made worse by Greenspan's prediction today of further slowing in the economy - exactly what Obama wants.

Read Paul Rahe: Obama's Wrecking Crew