Close readers of The New York Times will have noticed a disagreement among its reporters on whether Wall Street bankers are pleased or peeved with the treatment they've received from the Obama administration. The initial sparks flew when, on the occasion of a fancy fundraiser at the French restaurant Daniel, the paper's Nicholas Confessore gave the floor to a group of bankers who did little but kvetch about their hurt feelings. They did not like, according to the reports, being termed "fat cats" and then being asked to pony up $35,800 a person to dine with the president. And so according to the article's author, many of them were deciding to stay away.
Not long afterward, however, the paper's Dealbook reporter, Andrew Ross Sorkin, responded with a pitch for the opposing team. Here, we were told "Wall Street's absence may be more about optics -- the way things appear -- than reality. Behind the scenes, it seems that many bankers are not running away from the president as quickly as some might suspect." It turns out the president's people are just as worried about being photographed with some of his old supporters -- say for instance Goldman Sachs's Lloyd Blankfein -- as some of the more conservative bankers are about appearing to support the socialist, Kenyan, anticolonial, economy-taking-over Obama. In fact, one unnamed banker who did not attend the dinner admitted, "Obama hasn't been too bad to banks. He could have been worse."
I don't have any sources on where big-time Wall Street donors plan to put their money. But every time I read one of these stories I can't get over the degree of entitlement these guys feel, despite having tanked the economy.
Think back to President Barack Obama's first televised primetime press conference from early 2009. The key moment came when CNN's Ed Henry tried to stir up some trouble. Here's his question:
Thank you, Mr. President. You spoke again at the top about your anger about AIG. You've been saying that for days now. But why is it that it seems Andrew Cuomo seems to be, in New York, getting more actual action on it? And when you and Secretary Geithner first learned about this, 10 days, two weeks ago, you didn't go public immediately with that outrage. You waited a few days, and then you went public after you realized Secretary Geithner really had no legal avenue to stop it.
Got that? After the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out the insurance behemoth, AIG, its executives headed for a weeklong retreat at a luxury resort and spa, paying nearly half a million taxpayer-supplied dollars for a week of rubdowns and daiquiris. Henry, who recently moved to Fox (propaganda) News where he always belonged, was demanding to know why the president wasn't acting angrier.
It was a remarkably stupid question, and President Obama put him in his place on the follow-up, saying that he preferred to "know what he's talking about" before going off half-cocked. (And speaking of optics, let's not forget how great it would look for a brand-new black president to be seen screaming at wealthy white (and often Jewish) bankers.)
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they have neither one. and since they own the system and have managed to purchase every greedy
egotistical b@#t@rd willing to sell their souls for position and power they have managed to make
nothing illegal. the inmates are in charge of the institution. they are entitled. they are a lewis
black routine. (see ball washer).
by the F.I.R.E. sector. In an unsurprising quest for "...money for nothing..", we've all become complicit in allowing the production of Goods and Services to be subordinate to the TRANSACTION. Every politician knows it, and tries to convince his or her constituency that the PEOPLE are being represented, while in truth the Financial Services Industry (and all Corporations intractably tied to it) pulls the strings. Certainly Wall Street has a valuable place in the Economy, but it should not (in my opinion) be the driver; the Boom and Bust cycles in the last 3 or 4 decades should be ample proof of that.
That's right. Nearly half of our economy comprised of pushing paper and money around, rigging the game to extract the wealth of the middle class, and producing nothing except ever bigger piles of cash to feather the nests of the few.
And no one is stopping them. Which is why, eventually, they will take the economy of the entire world over the cliff. And they'll have a nice cushy landing on top of us 99 percenters.
Obama will rightly take a lions share of the blame for standing by and letting it happen instead of taking more urgent action to stop it.
by the FSI SHOULD be stopped. He is a Lawyer by training. His way of thinking may be
much closer to that of a Hedge Fund Manager than to a Scientist or an Engineer. Perhaps
all this talk of moving the country back to (messy and physical) manufacturing is good for
campaigning, but deep down he's been convinced that it's part of the U.S. PAST, and should not be reinvigorated. Yes, it's the stuff bad dreams are made of.....