Here is a look at the Obama economic team–they are not, IMO, the saviors of the middle class, but a continuation of the Wall Street favoritism.

Geithner has been intimately involved in the federal bailout of the financial industry, working closely with Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and current Treasury secretary Henry Paulson. It has been reported that Geithner was the principal architect behind the government-backed bailout of Bear Stearns, among other deals.

Before being appointed as president of the New York Fed, Geithner worked as a policy director for the International Monetary Fund and was a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a leading diplomatic think tank.  (read my post on the IMF and how it screws the people of a country in the name of capitalism)

The financial elite delivered its verdict on Geithner’s selection on Friday. When the Obama transition team leaked word of his selection, the markets rallied. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 494.13 points, or 6.5 percent. Geithner will be considered “Wall Street’s man” in the Obama administration.

Lawrence Summers, Obama’s selection to head the National Economic Council, was a leading economic official in the Clinton administration. As Treasury secretary, Summers became famous for using federal budget surpluses to pare down the national debt, even as Clinton slashed social spending.

Obama appears set to name Peter Orszag as director of the Office of Management and Budget. An economist with a PhD from the elite London School of Economics, Orszag has served as the director of the US Congressional Budget Office since January 2007. Previously he was a Senior Fellow at the liberal think tank the Brookings Institutution, and served in the Clinton administration as Senior Adviser on the Council of Economic Advisers.

Orszag is an advocate of revamping Social Security. He co-authored a book in 2004 called Saving Social Security: A Balanced Approach. In it, Orszag argues that a fundamental reason for the predicted insolvency of Social Security is that life expectancy “has risen by four years for men and five years for women since 1940,” “making benefits more valuable to recipients,” but more costly. To address this dilemma, Orszag advocated a combination of payroll and “benefits adjustments”—i.e., cuts in social security payments to retirees.

Jason Furman will likely serve as a senior economic adviser. Furman has expressed support for setting up private social security accounts and cutting benefits. Furman has headed the Brooking Institution’s Hamilton Project, an economic think tank founded by Robert Rubin.

A New York Times article on Monday, noted that Geithner, Summers, Orszag, and Furman are all protégés of Robert Rubin, whose advocacy of deregulation of financial institutions and markets has contributed to the current economic crisis. Rubin also played a leading role, as a senior adviser, in the policies adopted by Citigroup that have led it to the brink of ruin—and a second government bailout in two months

Appears that change is not coming to the economic team for Obama…these people are more of business as usual.  Sorry….if change was expected…then you will be sadly disappointed.  You think I am mistaken?  Then look at the markets when these appointments were laeked then announced….they shot up about 800 points…confidence on Wall Street that nothing will change…sorry to be the bearer of bad news.