Sounds good on the surface but a closer examination, it only helps those who started the whole thing–banks.

Obama’s proposed solution—the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan—will allocate hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds, the bulk of which will flow into the coffers of the very banks and corporations that reaped massive profits from the policies that precipitated the crash of 2008.

In a number of interviews leading up to Thursday’s speech, Obama made a point of stressing that in formulating his stimulus plan he had consulted Republican politicians and economists—that is, the very forces who have been the most ferocious advocates of the “free market” policies that contributed to the crisis and who most directly aided and abetted the corrupt practices he criticized in his address.

The modus operandi of Obama’s speech mirrored that employed three months ago to rush through Congress the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which transferred $700 billion in taxpayer funds to the banks. At that time, Bush took to the airwaves to issue dire warnings of recession and mass unemployment should Congress fail to act immediately to bail out the banks. The aim was to create an environment of anxiety and preempt any public discussion of the causes of the financial crisis or the merits of the bailout bill. Obama, then the Democratic presidential candidate, joined with the Democratic leadership in Congress to support the Republican administration’s rescue of Wall Street.

Of course, the TARP windfall for the financial elite has done nothing to prevent the disaster it was supposed to avert. The stimulus plan announced by Obama on Thursday will likewise do nothing to solve the economic crisis. Once again, a dire economic crisis is being exploited to implement policies favorable to big business that could otherwise not be implemented.

In his speech, Obama did not put a price tag on his plan, generally estimated to total between $675 billion and $775 billion over two years. Indeed, his transition team has repeatedly delayed submitting an actual plan to the new Democratic-dominated Congress, while Obama has sought to accommodate its provisions to the most right-wing factions in both parties. Earlier this week he let it be known that some $200 billion initially allocated as part of infrastructure funding will instead go toward tax breaks, bringing the total in tax windfalls to $300 billion, half of which will go to business. Ordinary families will get a mere $1,000 year in tax relief.

The “recovery” Obama envisages will, in fact, do little to relieve the distress and suffering of working class families. He declared his plan would “create or save at least 3 million jobs over the next few years.” But the US economy lost nearly 2.5 million jobs in 2008 alone and, as Obama hinted, it will continue to lose millions of jobs in the coming years. “It will take time—perhaps many years” before “we can restore opportunity and prosperity,” he declared, adding at another point that “it is altogether likely that things may get worse before they get better.”

Sorry, but my optimism has left the building.  Early in the electoral process, I suggested that Obama was not the agent of change that others thought he was, I was chasitized, especially on Daily Kos, but so far he has proven me right and the more he talks the more he continues to make my prediction accurate.  Thank you, Mr. President-elect.