But one of the city’s most successful hedge-fund hotshots offers a different surmise: “The majority of Wall Street thinks, ‘Hey, you lent us money. We did a trade. We paid you back. When you had me down, you could have crushed me, you could have done whatever you wanted. You didn’t do it! So stop your bitching and stop telling me I owe you, because I already paid you everything! The fact that I’m making money now is because I’m smarter than you!’ I think that’s where you’ve got this massive disconnect. In simple human terms, the government is saying, ‘I saved your life, and all you did was thank me once. You should be calling me every day: Thank you. Thank you.’ The guy who saved the life expects more. And the guy whose life is saved says, ‘I already thanked you!’ ”
via nymag.com
The issue that most sorely tested Obama’s restraint was that of Wall Street bonuses. Emanuel and Axelrod had reams of data showing that this was by far the hottest of populist hot buttons—and one that could inflict collateral damage on the White House. One day in the winter of 2009, Emanuel was meeting with a senior Goldman executive and offered some Rahmian advice. “You don’t fucking get it!” he said. “You’re making $600,000 a year and you think you’re a fucking saint—because you were making $50 million before. But as far as the guy across the street thinks, you’re still a fucking pig! Reduce it to zero and he’ll love you!”
Oh, how history might have been different if that dude, and the rest of his chums, had only listened. Instead, last October, news broke that Goldman was planning to award $23 billion in bonuses to its executives at year’s end. Suddenly, a story that had been simmering all year hit the boiling point—and it indeed proved to be a problem for Team Obama. By December, Axelrod’s polling gurus were seeing clear signs in their numbers that the president was perceived as being too close to the Wall Street greedheads.
That month, Obama appeared on 60 Minutes and proclaimed, “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street.” Railing against “massive profits and obscene bonuses” and demanding, “We want our money back,” he unveiled in January a tax on the 50 biggest banks that would raise $90 billion over ten years to cover bailout losses. And, finally, he rolled out the Volcker Rule.
thank you for pointing me to this article. what i think is striking, if we just take the account at face value, is that Obama thinks that he is getting "the policy right" and not worrying about "optics" or the "politics" of financial reform. Of course this sounds like a load of shit but if these scum bags are really angry at Obama (which would seem plausible given the increasing financial contributions to Republicans) than he may in fact believe that a "moderate bill" one that doesn't change the fundamentals of how Wall Street works, is the right response. Given I assumed Obama to be not only intelligent, but also reasonable, this just baffles me. Perhaps ideology is blinding afterall but my cynicism says he wants to keep receiving financial contributions from Wall Street. In the end it may not matter - we are fucked either way.
Posted by: Alain | May 31, 2010 at 11:07 PM