Robert Scheer: Wall Street’s Fat Cats Are Still In Charge

[marmar]

from Truthdig:



Wall Street’s Fat Cats Are Still In Charge

Posted on Dec 15, 2009
By Robert Scheer


Most Americans now know that Wall Street bankers are so greedy as to never be trusted, and I suppose it is a sign of progress that our president now seems to grasp the obvious. How depressing, though, that a man who was elected as a consequence of one of the boldest grass-roots populist campaigns in this nation’s history should now feel obligated to offer the disclaimer that “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.”

But whatever his intentions, Barack Obama has in fact accomplished just that, to the immense anger of the public that elected him. Thus, it is understandable that, in his “60 Minutes” interview last Sunday, Obama lashed out at the ingrate bankers whose greed he had served but who have failed to seriously increase lending or forestall foreclosures and instead shamelessly pocketed the cash the government threw their way:

“They’re still puzzled why is it that people are mad at the banks. Well, let’s see,” he said. “You guys are drawing down $10 , $20 million bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it’s gone through in—in decades, and you guys caused the problem. And we’ve got 10 percent unemployment.”

But what did the president expect from those guys after he and his Republican predecessor were so quick to reward them so handsomely for their failures? In a reversal of the guiding principles of the meritocracy that informed Obama’s own success story, the president promoted, rather than flunked, the people who got it all wrong.

One of those was Larry Summers, who as Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary pushed through the radical deregulation that enabled disastrous Wall Street greed. But although Summers pocketed a cool $15 million from Wall Street in 2008 as he was advising Obama the candidate, he seems at last to have gained some awareness that the rules of the game he helped write now need to be changed. Speaking of the very bankers who once so handsomely paid him for his services, Summers, now Obama’s top economic adviser, told CNN: “Here is what I think they don’t get. ... It was their irresponsible risk-taking in many cases that brought the economy to collapse.” ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/wall_streets_fat_cats_are_still_in_charge_20091215/

[democracy1st]

1. K & R

[SteveM]

2. In charge and telling Dems what to do. And quickly (nt)

[progressoid]

3. Loves me the Scheer.

[Doctor_J]

4. Hate Radio is all that is standing between those people and the torches

If they didn't have Big Media blaming everything on Alan Grayson and John Conyers, their ranks would have suffered some heavy casualties already