Notes from post from Nate Berg on Bill Fletcher's recent comments on the Obama White House at Tufts University in Boston:

Fletcher expressed his hope that Americans would not hold Obama to great expectations. "There are no miracles," he said. "Change comes only so long as there are social movements."

He opposed the appointments of Lawrence Summers and Rahm Emmanuel as Obama's top economic adviser and the White House chief of staff, respectively, saying that they were too moderate.

Fletcher also dismissed the accusation that Obama is a socialist. A self-declared socialist himself, Fletcher criticized capitalism as inherently crash-prone and trade agreements as damaging to the citizens of member countries.

"Economic theorists try to make you think that economic crises are unusual," he said. "They are all treated as if they are the responsibility of a few greedy people or [as if] something broke down, and it'll never happen again."

"The normality is crisis," Fletcher said. "Often what happens is the crises get displaced ... As the United States expands, the crises get pushed out to the rest of the world."

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