Obama’s Tax Task Force Includes AIG Board Member?

Brody Mullins reports for the Wallstreet Journal:

Barack Obama’s new working group on taxes has an unlikely member: a current board member of American International Group Inc.

AIG has been under fire from the Obama and congressional leaders in both parties for doling out $165 million in bonuses to executives after accepting $173 billion in government bailout funds.

But when the White House announced the creation of its new Task Force on Tax Reform, economic adviser Peter Orszag said that one of its members will be Martin Feldstein.

Feldstein is a Harvard economics professor who has been involved with U.S. economic policy for decades. He was a top economics adviser to President Ronald Reagan. But he also sits on the board of directors of AIG and its financial-products division, according to AIG’s Web site and Feldstein’s office.

“I do plan to remain on the AIG board,” Feldstein said in an email. The White House did not respond immediately to calls and emails requesting comment.

AIG’s financial-products unit is at the heart of the controversy over bonuses. The company awarded retention bonuses to top executives last year even though the unit lost $40 billion and nearly sank AIG. When the bonuses became public last week, the White House and Democratic and Republican lawmakers were furious.

Obama criticized the bonuses and lawmakers began moving legislation to block them. After a set of hearing on Capitol Hill last week, more than a dozen AIG employees agreed to return the payments.

The White House Task Force on Tax Reform is charged with developing suggestions for comprehensive overhaul of the tax system. In announcing the board, Orszag told reporters that Obama thinks that the “prospective members of the board would be especially well-suited to carry out the mission” of the group.

Other members include former Clinton administration economics adviser Laura Tyson; Roger Ferguson, the CEO of TIAA-CREF; and former SEC Chairman William Donaldson.

Source: Here

The image above shows Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (left) - another Wallstreet slickerster with a PhD and connections to every major global elite - talking to Mr. Martin Feldstein at a posh luncheon hosted by the American Economic Association in Chicago on January 5, 2007. Bernanke is ranked 4th most powerful person in the world in an annual ranking by Newsweek. (photo credit: Brian Kersey)

i have two things to say on the 'tapping' of Feldstein: first, i'm disappointed (and quite surprised) if Obama is ignorant enough to think that this guy would help the Administration figure out what went wrong - perhaps by admitting (or repenting?) his mistakes? He'll recommend what's in his best interest, or he'll apply his demonstrable faulty logic to the task of thinking up possible solutions.

And secondly, Obama seems to be intent on trying to reinvent/bandage the very network of social assemblages and practices currently ruining our species/civilization. Which, of course, is to be expected. Humans and their polities have a history of trying to salvage a bad situation before taking the harder steps towards a more healthy, adaptive transformation.

Obviously Obama is not interested is making substantial changes to the pathological financial systems - systems currently propping up deconstructing markets and cultures of misguided 'resource' use.

it makes me wonder if he's too fearful of the elite power brokers to do what he knows is right, or if he's just using the only tools at his disposal within the current U.S political 'climate' to make his 'strategic' decisions?