I do wonder if the braintrusts in charge of the economic strategy are that far different. 

Barack Obama is a product of this elitist system.     So are his degree-laden Cabinet members.     They come out of Harvard, Yale, Wellesley and Princeton.      Their friends and classmates made huge fortunes on Wall Street and in powerful law firms.     They go to the same class reunions.     They belong to the same clubs.      They speak the same easy language of privilege and comfort and entitlement.     They are endowed with an unbridled self-confidence and blind belief in a decaying political and financial system that has nurtured and empowered them.

These elites, and the corporate system they serve, have ruined the country.      These elite cannot solve our problems.         They have been trained to find "solutions," such as the trillion-dollar bailout of banks and financial firms, that sustain the system.       They will feed the beast until it dies.      Don’t expect them to save us.      They don’t know how.       And when it all collapses, when our rotten financial system with its trillions in worthless assets implodes and our imperial wars end in humiliation and defeat, they will be exposed as being as helpless, and as stupid, as the rest of us.

from: The Best and the Brightest
ghLed America Off a Cliff
by Chris Hedges
Truthdig.com

The stench gets ever-worse.      Where is that paddle?