Mandatory reposting of Michael Hudson’s interview on Obama:

KARL FITZGERALD: So let’s just line Obama right up, because I remember you talking about Obama during his time as one of the worst presidents and shocking the progressive movement.

So we’ve got the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. We’ve got of course the bailing out of the banks post the Great Recession. What are some of the other signature policies during his era that really slammed his long term reputation?

MICHAEL HUDSON: His anti-Black policies. What you call “bailing out the banks” should really be thought of as evicting almost ten million American families by the junk mortgages. He had run [for office] by promising to write down the mortgages, the junk mortgages that were way in excess of the ability to pay, and also way in excess of the properties’ real values. And in excess of any reasonable ability to be paid.

Essentially Black and Hispanic borrowers were charged twice as much as White borrowers for this. Instead of writing down the mortgage payments to reflect what it would normally cost to rent an apartment — which was the basis for how housing prices were set in the United States — instead of restricting the mortgage loan to not absorb more than twenty-five percent of the borrower’s personal income — the loan absorbed much much more. Much higher interest rates.

The banks basically sent borrowers to corrupt property appraisal firms that had over-appraised the property and had filled in false income statements. And that’s why the loans as I’ve said before were called NINJA. No Income, No Job, no Assets.

Obama basically said, “Well somebody has to lose. Either ten million Americans, basically Black and Hispanic families, lose, or my campaign contributors lose.”

Well he invited his campaign contributors to a party at the White House and said, “Hey guys, I’m the only person standing between you and the mob with the pitchforks.”

“The mob with the pitchforks” is how he characterized the Black population and the Hispanic population.

He had done exactly the same thing in Chicago. His job was to tear down the Black communities. To get rid of them. Right in Chicago now — there was an election in Chicago two days ago. And the Black Chicago mayor [Lori] Lightfoot was voted out of office because she did nothing to stop Obama’s final anti-Black move, which was to tear down the one part — the nicest part in Chicago — that was designed by the designer of Central Park in [New York City] — to tear it down to build [Obama’s] incredibly ugly library and just displace the Black population there.

And the [Chicago] South Side Black population had really had come to realize that Obama had torn down so many of their houses, attacked so many Black families, and now was taking away their park as the last post-presidential act that the Black mayor Lightfoot only got fifteen percent of the vote. So at least Chicagoans are aware of Obama’s hatred of Black people.

And I know people who were friends with his roommates in Chicago — I went to the University of Chicago as I said — and they said that he had often made anti-Black comments and had not gone out with Black people. And I knew his professors at Harvard, who warned me about how they were always mistrustful of him because of his always taking an anti-Black position even as a student at Harvard.

And I knew his classmates in Harvard, who also said that he seemed to be quite a suck-up. And it’s amazing to me that somebody in the public eye, who has been president, that there is such an expunging in history of his real character. And that as a result, the Democratic Party, as you see with Biden’s politics today, are still trying to hope for a Democratic victory by attracting the Black votes. And so of course they’re not going to let the Black population realize how much they were injured by Obama, and of course by the Clintons before him.