Cabinet chief: Obama team 'unreachable'
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Last week, it was all smiles and handshakes as Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama put on a show of unity in Washington.
But yesterday, Sir Gus O'Donnell, Britain's most senior civil servant, exposed transatlantic tension when he protested that Downing Street was finding it "unbelievably difficult" to plan for next month's G20 summit in London because of problems tracking down senior figures in the US administration. "There is nobody there. You cannot believe how difficult it is," the Cabinet Secretary told a civil service conference in Gateshead.
Last night Downing Street insisted the comments – reported on the Whitehall and Westminster World website – had been taken out of context. It added that Britain and the US had established a "very good and close working relationship" in the run-up to the G20 conference in London on 2 April. The Cabinet Secretary's undiplomatic language follows an outwardly-successful 48-hour visit by Mr Brown to Washington, which included talks with the new President and an address to the US Congress. The Prime Minister secured Mr Obama's backing for moves to kick-start the global economy, which he hopes to use to prompt other G20 leaders to support the fiscal stimulus package.
But Sir Gus's remarks will leave ministers smoothing feathers in the new administration, whose support is vital for agreement at the summit.
He made them as he stressed the importance of a permanent civil service rather than the US practice of filling posts when a new President is elected. He said it would be "madness" to introduce a similar system in Britain, because of the need for continuity in major projects such as the 2012 Olympics.
"You get to a certain point, and you can't go any further," Sir Gus said. "A whole new bunch of people come in who probably haven't been in government before." Fifty days after President Obama was sworn in, every senior post in the US Treasury Department remains vacant, with the exception of Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary, who should have 17 deputies. The vacuum has prompted complaints that it is struggling to deal with the most severe downturn since the 1930s.
Mr Brown's official spokesman said: "[Sir Gus] was explaining the benefits of the British system of having a permanent civil service. We have a very good and close working relationship with the United States on G20 and other issues. I think last week what you saw was an administration fully engaged on the G20. That is the sense we got."
The Cabinet Secretary's comments were removed from the website after the Government protested.
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Comments
no banking jobs in sight - where did it all go wrong?
quickly boy where do you dive - oh maybe to your pension.
the civil servants need a complete cleansing and lets start with this prat Fat Dave - god help us!
(I personally hope you find a decent place place for the Churchhill bust....it infuritates me to see the memory of a great man treated so disrespectfully)
The only silver lining will be watching the left go nuts as they see what a huge bunch of suckers they were to fall for his blarney.
Brown has failed and he will not be allowed to bring other countried down with his outlandish schemes. His irresponsible spending and borrowing have been anathema to sensible governments around the World. They see the next two generations of British children unfairly saddled with the biggest debt in history. Brown has failed and they will be extremely wary of his disasterous reputation.
What American financial team? As the article noted, Timothy Geithner IS the team. 50 days into the new administration, Geithner is still the only senior appointee at Treasury.
And Geithner is tops in his field? Geithner couldn't get his own income taxes straight to the tune of over $30,000 US. The back taxes were owed from his stint of employment with the IMF. The financial genius signed statements for the IMF that acknowleged he was liable to pay certain taxes that the IMF did not withhold from his salary.
When it came time to file his taxes, and pay those obligations, however, the financial genius apparently "forgot". When forced to come clean before his appointment as Treasury Secretary, he blamed the errors, and his failure to pay what was owed, on his tax accounting software. Somehow I don't think the IRS would be so forgiving if an ordinary, non-genius used that as an excuse.
Then there's the assumption that Geithner wasn't asleep on the job. Geithner was president of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve Bank. He was ultimately responsible for overseeing all of the big corporate banks headquartered in New York City, you know, all of those banks whose irresponsible lending and investments were the catalyst for the current financial crisis? All of those banks that the American taxpayers have now "lent" hundreds of billions of dollars to?
Geithner wasn't just asleep on the job, he was comatose! Either that, or he was more concerned about scratching the backs of all of his Wall Street cronies than he was protecting the life savings, retirements and investments of millions of Americans.
If Geithner is the best that the American financial team can come up with, then the whole world is in deep trouble.
SIR GUS O'DONNEL
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DGJAKAL IN GREEN
If your new man, in the White House, and all his aids are not nice to our Gordy and his yes men - then Gordy will save all of the World except for the USA. Then you will be sad!
America needed us because of the financial centre in London, also because through the commonwealth Britain exerts the largest bloc in the UN's general assembly (Britain votes on the Commonwealths behalf e.g. Britain does what it wants, the Commonwealth gets asked afterwards that is).
But, Obama has already sounded out the EU in allowing direct interface between NAFTA and the EU thus cutting the UK right out of the deal, it means we are probably losing our "most favoured status" as if this goes ahead, we will have to trade as an EU member and that means we are in competition with every other EU state.
It does kind of hint that Obama is going to take the US into protectionism and also allow the current raft of Tariff legislations to go through as well, Brown knows full well what a protectionist America will do to us, even the mighty BAe will be thrown from the Pentagon's top table in favour of lesser US companies.
It is what America needs right now, some people to re-invest and rebuild from within and it would be good for us in the long run because we have got to stop suckling on the American teat and resolve this for ourselves, it doesn't look to rosy for Brown & Co who have done little to prepare for this, zero contingency plans and offered nothing more than knee-jerk reactions in all their attempts to stem the downfall of our economy,
They'll be crawling on their belly's to James Gordon Brown soon enough.
Hussein wants to talk to the terrorists and communists, but not to leaders of the free world.
Watch out Mr. O. What goes around comes around, and I think the US citizens are coming around...
Your banter would indicate that your pejorative use of the name Hussein, (I assume you mean President Barack Obama), means you have a problem with the 'arabs'. I'd hazard a guess and say you are either some redneck klansman from the blue ridge mountains or an angry barista slinging starbuck lattes on the beach in Tel Aviv. Of course a disaffected scatologist listening to too much Rush Limbaugh is a possibilty and if so then keep in mind
the USA is a democracy, Obama was voted in by a landslide, that's how democracy works.
So come off it and settle down. Once he has a full staff and things aren't so chaotic, he'll start giving you the attention you 'deserve.' Who knows, he might even buy you some flowers. Goodness!!
And why shouldn't he deal with them, after all they are all crises created solely by America who thought it knew best...
Britain's long history has included the occasionally arrogant and incompetant royalty, so I am confident that you will recognize our current unqualified Ineligible-Affirmative-Action-President as a temporary phenomenon and accept my humble apology on his behalf. I hope you return Churchill's bust after the current embarassment passes into history.
All 42 ddd cup of it. Please come get it. Every neocon since the late nineties has been suckling off it and now we're all bust.
PS If you need financial help, you could opt for the French way of dealing with royalty hording fortunes.
PSS Everyone in England should go to a dentist right away as this will require a tremendous consumer input monetarily and improve your social lives - movies, Pub, dinner, Jewlry, clothes, domestic assaults, increased police presence, divorce, more Pub, Pub fights, more dental work....
they're actually coming up with ways to further f*ck up the economy by taxing what has survived thus far into the ground and regulating the rest of it into oblivion. What does the US and - by extension - the world economy need? cap and trade (TAX) and unfettered unionization? gee - that's FUCKINBRILLIANT!
What Obama and his boys will do is have us yearning for the halcyon days of the Carter economic malaise... enough dentist jokes too - why don't you get a job and move out of your step-dad's basement?
More likely, as explained above, they're just in over their heads, especially in Treasury. They'll find their sea legs, but it'll take some time. There are pluses and minuses to a shadow cabinet, and this is certainly one. The US government is designed to protect the citizenry from its' predations, not for efficiency.