"Regulators keep falling down on the job, and keep getting rewarded for it by Wall Street" - Taibbi

[woo me with science]

5. He certainly seems to have friends on Wall Street.

He keeps finding new people for his administration there.

Of course he has influence. He is the President of the United States. He was certainly able to pressure attorneys general across the country to abandon their criminal investigations of corrupt banks and pursue settlements instead. The claim that there is nothing to prosecute is simply untrue. The attorneys involved in these cases have wanted to continue them, and the President has obstructed that with his settlements.

With regard to activities that should be illegal but are not, he should have thought about that before allowing bankers to write the banking "reforms" that have proven to be milquetoast at best. If he truly wants more stringent regulations, there is nothing stopping him from calling loudly and persistently for a return of Glass-Steagall or, at the very least, issuing a clarion call for other specific changes he wants and instructing every Democrat to echo that call and rally the people behind them to demand change.

Instead, he hires a Wall Street banker who profited from the housing collapse as his new Chief of Staff.