The blame duck blames the fat cats
President Obama says “”I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.”
No, of course not. He ran for office to be helping out his own fat cat friends and special interest groups, as well as to destroy the incentives for bankers to lend money to small businesses and get the economy growing again.
Obama displays either a profound misunderstanding of the way capitalism works, or a profound dislike for it, or perhaps both. Bankers are neither social workers nor saints, nor are they expected to be. They are in the business of making money. If you want them to lend money to others, you have to create a climate in which that seems like a profitable idea.
Part of the process of creating that atmosphere would be to refrain from demonizing them, especially when you have absolutely no experience in the business or private sector yourself. Another part might consist of sending the message that you are working in an intelligent and focused manner to solve the problems that led to the meltdown last year, rather than to spend us into ever-increasing debt by funding your pet projects and ignoring the cost to the economy.
But I suppose that’s not what Obama was elected to do. He was elected to blame people, and to call on their sense of self-sacrifice. And maybe to have a little private chat with them, Chicago-style. As Larry Summers says:
[Obama]’s going to have a serious talk with the bankers…The country did incredible things for the banking industry. Those things had to be done to save the economy, but no major bank would be intact, in a position to pay bonuses, if that extraordinary support had not been provided. The bankers need to recognize that. They need to recognize that they’ve got obligations to the country after all that’s been done for them…President Obama is going to be talking with them about what they can do to support enhanced lending to customers across the country. We were there for them. And the banks need to do everything they can to be sure they’re there for customers across this country.
“I did not run for office to…..”
I have heard a lot of that lately about a great many things.
Why, pray tell, did he run for office?
Interestingly enough, the criticism was levelled at the banks who have paid back the money lent them by taxpayers; in other words, by the banks who could afford to pay the bonuses without affecting taxpayers.
Why is that a problem?
“Obama displays either a profound misunderstanding of the way capitalism works, or a profound dislike for it, or perhaps both.”
My bet currently is he is displaying profound – and willful – ignorance of how various industries/business enterprises actually work.
He doesn’t have a clue how these businesses function within the larger capitalist system, and is content to just keep attacking the straw men he’s created in his own mind of these industries.
Banks, in this example, are no longer the industry that facilitates capital moving about through our economy and thereby generating greater wealth, but banking is rather a mean spirited greedy old business that seeks nothing more than to take from the needy for the truly greedy.
I guess a deeper understanding of economics is too much to ask of the Commander-in-Thief who’s only solution to problems is to raise taxes on the yet unborn…..
Looks to me like he wants to push the banks into the same sort of lending that caused the crisis in the first place.
“Why, pray tell, did he run for office?”
So he could roll around the world in the big airplane, silly.
Is there no end to the profound lack of profundity with Obama and his advisers? Each new day it’s profoundly apparent that profundity is missing.
Actually, many of his fat cat friends are on Wall Street. Inconvenient Truth.
Actually, many of his fat cat friends are on Wall Street.
You mean that aren’t down the hall from him right now, presumably.
“I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.”
No? Pure demogoguery. Check out campaign contributions in the 2008 cycle. Here’s the link for the securities and investment industry as a whole, and that for Goldman Sachs in particular (#1 contributor in the industry, 75% to Dems. Citigroup was #14, 61% to Dems).
I believe we were discussing helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street. Btw, where’s Mitsu, anyway?
What do you expect from a snake oil salesman,
Calling people names the day before you are to meet with them is unlikely to be an effective negotiating technique. Time and again Obama comes across as ham handed.
Mr. Frank: ah, but calling people names the day before you are to meet with them is an effective Chicago “negotiating” technique.
IMPOSSIBLE to Over-Caricature this president and his mob. Can’t be done. Wagging his scrawny 7th Grade Hall Monitor finger at men and women who DO things. Too boot, he preaches to them to take greater risks–just like the Dems famously did to the mortgage industry which CRASHED as a result of faulty-risky stupid loans–so the hole can go deeper. I’m thinking Rush is right about this guy: It’s ALL in the plan.
Calling people names the day before you are to meet with them is unlikely to be an effective negotiating technique.
Assuming, of course, that it’s not kabuki for the rubes’ benefit.
Consider the tone and content of Obama’s speech in Oslo; the Left needed a sop to keep them sweet. And voila! A verbal sop appears. Coinky-dink? Maybe. Maybe not.
Obviously the POTUS does not include in his “fat cats” list a person who is blessed with having a $300 K job created especially for herself, a point made blatantly clear when the job is eliminated after that person resigns. After all, there are no enemies on the left, and no “fat cats” in Hyde Park.
Obama is upset that the banks (unlike in germany) didnt get that they were being bribed for a place in the new world (fascist communist) order…
He basically is saying when i buy you, you better stay bought.
he is trying to wring feelings, guilt and emotional respone from a part of our system that is EMPIRICAL in a way that he isnt used to.
put this way… if yuo were investing 10 million of your own money, how much impirical knowlete would you want? thats why the man who cracked mann in AGW and his hockey stick was in an area where finance plays a big role, and where, because of it, there are huge numbers of things done to insure empirical honesty.
the sad part is that i wanted to have enough to the side to leave befor this. now the wealthy have and are leaving… (the uk guys are going to jersey and guirnsy)…
unlike russia, when we are low enough down. the crud will hit the fan… and he will find that he destroyed the resources needed to prevent china and russia from taking things…
chavez is gearing up for war against columbia, and anather state. once that happens, it wont be long till you have a lot mroe stuff happening here. those people know that our state is no longer effective.
Calling people names the day before you are to meet with them is unlikely to be an effective negotiating technique.
What? telling the House Republicans that I won isn’t how you win friends and influence people?
Gringo, Obama had better not refer to Michelle as a “fat cat” unless he wants to look like Tiger Woods.
Never in a million years ever thought I’d say this but GO BANKERS!!!!
Nah, Julia, the bankers brought this on themselves. As Kissinger famously said of the Iraq-Iran War, the pity is that they can’t both lose. I hope they bash each others’ brains out.
And throw lavish parties and take his wife to exotic places for dinner dates and to sit in the oval office chair and spin around going “wheeeeee!”
“”I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.”
This is one of the favorite tactics of the Left and Liberals… I guess it can be called the “straw man argument en masse.” It involves concocting a guilty group (or, as Marxists would have it, a guilty class) which serves as the foil for the supposed good one wants to see happen. The guilty group is the bogey man which is supposed to be holding up some important bit of “progress,” or worse, they are the “oppressors.” The guilty group gets tarrred and feathered, and then the Left throws anything it wants at it to see if it sticks.
There are times, to be sure, that a particular group (such as an organization, or a political group, or even a profession) may be at fault for something, or failing to do something. But the Left has the all too reflexive habit of condemning a group before any evidence has been presented, and before the jury has had a chance to deliberate.
I agree with Don. Somehow Obama and the congress will force the banks to make huge new rounds of very bad loans in order to achieve some socialist pipe dream. When reality smashes in, we’ll get the same result we did from the real estate handouts. A galaxy of hurt and billions, trillions of dollars lost from our national net worth.
And that’s before the hyper-inflation from the relentless printing of baseless currency kicks in.
The various flailings and cannibalizations of the government in “Atlas Shrugged” come strongly to mind. Watching the hapless nincompoop in the White House try to manipulate events is a perverse treat for us fans of the absurd. Like toasting marshmallows over the embers of our burnt-down house, we must take our entertainment where we can.
It’s called deflection – get the masses mad at the “fat cats” and maybe they won’t get too mad at his expansion of government and out of control spending.
So Obie has a thing against the fat cats of Wall Street. So when will Obie show some stones against the fat cats in Government?
Yeah, I know, at his funeral.
Divide and conquer.
I’ve never mastered the skill.
But people in the zone – the Chicago zone get lots of practice.
His Majesty is having Hill Demos to the WH today for a pep talk, arm twisting, etc. Ya know, for transparency and 2-Party support!?
His Health Ponzi is a ‘popularity’ shipwreck and still The One is relentlessly pushing. Is there NOBODY amongst the Senate Dems with a nano-ounce of Guts? He’s far down in personal approval from any modern president at this point in his 1st term(since polls began)and barely has 30+% support from Americans on the Healthcare Grift. But, By Gawd, straight ahead into the valley of fire rode The Bamma! Only a true ideologue-neo Marxist(I’m beginning to believe)would ride this broken pony over the cliff.