Thomas Jefferson said, "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." Sixty-three years later, Abraham Lincoln expanded that warning. Here is what Lincoln said: "I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the financial institution in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy ... I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before in the midst of war." Both Jefferson and Lincoln look like oracles today.
Both those Presidents saw the same arrogance from bankers that Obama saw three weeks ago when he suggested that the banking industry's caporegime should meet to discuss the conspiratorial caliber conduct they have exhibited for decades.
The Citigroup CEO sent the message to Obama that he had other things to do than to personally meet with Obama.
One thing is clear. The bankers who did clear their schedule to meet didn't take the power of the Presidency any more seriously today than bankers did when Lincoln called them America's "greatest enemy."
The week before Obama met with those bankers, he had publicly called them "fat cats." He knew about banker history that Lincoln probably would never have imagined.
For example, he knew the history of Goldman Sach's profiting from the very mortgage crisis they had helped to create. Obama knew that Goldman had made a profit north of $4 billion by betting that the subprime Ponzi scheme would collapse. The ugly part of that bet is that Goldman was still hustling their subprime derivative garbage to mom-and-pop pensions even while they were betting on the collapse.
When Jefferson told us that the banking institutions would be "more dangerous than standing armies," he had no way of foreseeing the TARP treachery that bankers have pulled off with $500 billion of taxpayers' money.
But in 2008, Obama saw the beginning of that treachery when he watched America's most powerful bankers grovel like pathetic paupers begging for handouts.
In fact, the Citigroup bankers who could not clear their schedule to meet with Obama in 2009, were part of that groveling group. They received $20 billion in TARP welfare.
Not only was Citigroup too busy to meet personally with the President, they also never met with all the small businesses that were promised loans from Citgroup.
Citigroup is not the only beggar who lied to taxpayers in order to get handouts.
All of those Wall Street panhandlers told taxpayers that they would agree to new banking regulations to control their obscene greed. When they wanted welfare, a few of them admitted that it was a lack of regulations and regulatory enforcement that put America in the poor house. But the day after they got their handouts, they hired hundreds of rapacious K Streeters to undermine banking reform legislation attempts.
Once again, the banking industry validated a warning Jefferson left us late in his career; "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency .... the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless ..." (T.J. 1802.)