A Rubinite.  In Obama's campaign.  "Rubinite" is wonkish jargon for persons associated with Robert Rubin,  a Goldman Sachs rich guy that served as President Clinton's Treasury secretary. 

That Rubinite is Jason Furman. Rubinites happily bestowed the NAFTA model upon us.  They believed comparative advantage was actually true in its pure form. 

“For years we’ve expressed strong concerns about corporate influence on the Democratic Party,” John J. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, said Wednesday in a statement implicitly critical of the symbolism of the appointment, no matter Mr. Furman’s economic skills. ...

“My own views, such as they are, are irrelevant,” Mr. Furman said. ...

David Ignatius, WaPo columnist, is happy.  We can't be consorting with protectionists you know.

It was a telling sign that one of the first things Barack Obama did after clinching the Democratic presidential nomination was to hire a new economic policy director, someone who can help him move from the anti-NAFTA left of the party toward the pro-market center that traces its lineage to Clinton administration Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. 

Furman and Obama bear watching.  The country cannot afford more of these trade-agreements-for-the-sake-of-trade-agreements, and cannot afford to merely "tweak" our trade policy direction... which assumes we had a trade policy aside from more USTR-negotiated deals, whatever they may say.  Financial firms' interests should not longer predominate.

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written by China Watcher , June 13, 2008

Everyone seems to be certain of Furman's ties to Rubin. They may turn out to be decisive, of course. But at the same time, Furman would seem to have much stronger ties to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and a sharp critic of Rubinomics. Those ties may prove to be stronger. The plain fact is that Rubin's policies are widely understood to have helped put us in the mess we're in. Even Rubin now is telling Democrats that the old policies have to change. Don't believe McCain's campaign rhetoric that Obama will take us back to the "failed policies of the past." Give Furman the benefit of the doubt. Prof. Goolsbee, on the other hand, is a known quantity -- and that quantity is zero. He's a walking, talking text book free trader. How can Furman not be an improvement over that? Last point: good leaders listen to advice from everyone and then decide for themselves. Why do we think that Furman is suddenly in contgrol of Obama's thinking?

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Divide and Conquer, CFR Rules
written by Theresa , June 13, 2008

We can talk here all day with the well put in place Divide and Conquer mentality while key individuals who are members from the Council and Foreign Relations which both Obama and MacCain no difference are both members, have been put in place to tranform us into the North American Union. See here, so all this Trade dilemma was needed (current Free Trade) which is really managed Trade to make the NAU possible and we the people powerless for not even the major networks are covering this behind the scenes De Facto new government for We The People and the United States. Here, http://www.fina-nafi.org/eng/f...count=eng
and look to see that top board of directors for our integration of government is a member of the CFR cherry picked to implement these global dismantling of our Nation, trade and geography boarders. Now get on the phone and call them to let them know that this is Treason.

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