Barack Obama Goes From White House to Wall Street Seamlessly

Just get a look at this typical mainstream media treatment of the story from Bloomberg (you know, that one Wall Street guy’s news site):

Bloomberg Businessweek reports:

“Hillary Clinton says she made a mistake when she gave speeches on Wall Street after leaving government. Taking money from banks, she writes in her new memoir, created the impression she was in their pocket.”

Well- yeah.

But not just that she gave speeches. It was what she said in those speeches:

“In private paid speeches to financial firms and interest groups before she declared her candidacy, the Democratic presidential nominee comes off as a knowing insider, willing to cut backroom deals, embrace open trade and grant Wall Street a central role in crafting financial regulations, according to excerpts obtained last week through hacked campaign emails provided to WikiLeaks.”

She said things like:

“There’s nothing magic about regulations, too much is bad, too little is bad. How do you get to the golden key, how do we figure out what works? And the people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry.

WikiLeaks’ donate button is at the top of their website.

“Her old boss doesn’t seem to share her concern.

Last month, just before her book What Happened was published, Barack Obama spoke in New York to clients of Northern Trust Corp. for about $400,000, a person familiar with his appearance said. Last week, he reminisced about the White House for Carlyle Group LP, one of the world’s biggest private equity firms, according to two people who were there. Next week, he’ll give a keynote speech at investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald LP’s health-care conference.”

Hope! Change! Forward!

Nope. Same. Eat it.

“Obama is coming to Wall Street less than a year after leaving the White House, following a path that’s well trod and well paid. While he can’t run for president, he continues to be an influential voice in a party torn between celebrating and vilifying corporate power. His new work with banks might suggest which side of the debate he’ll be on and disappoint anyone expecting him to avoid a trap that snared Clinton. Or, as some of his executive friends see it, he’s just a private citizen giving a few paid speeches to other successful people while writing his next book.”

 

“He was the president of the entire United States — financial services are under that umbrella,” said former UBS Group AG executive Robert Wolf, an early supporter who joined the Obama Foundation board this year. “He doesn’t look at Wall Street like, ‘Oh, these are individuals who don’t want the best for the country.’ He doesn’t stereotype.”

Would you just listen to this Wall Street banker crying and saying, “We’re Americans too you know? We deserve to get some representation in government too once in a while!”

We all bailed you out for almost a trillion dollars. If this were really a heartless capitalist country like socialist bozos complain it is, we would have just let you jump out of your skyscrapers back in 2008.

“Obama’s relationship with Wall Street hasn’t always been good. Bankers still boil over with rage about him, wincing over his 2009 line about fat cats as if the wounds were fresh. But his Justice Department prosecuted no major bankers for their roles in the financial crisis, and he resisted calls to break up the biggest banks, signing a regulatory overhaul that annoyed them with new rules but didn’t stop them from pulling in record profits.”

How can the author just deadpan transition from those first two sentences to the rest of that paragraph? He called them “fat cats” to make the proles feel like they’re being listened to and keep them from rioting. Ouch!

And then handled Wall Street with the softest, most velvety kid gloves for eight years, after voting for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill as a Senator despite Main Street melting the Capitol switchboards to tell them “No!”

And none of this is news at all. Some of Obama’s biggest donors in 2008 were Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley.

I go back and forth on the question of which bloc of voters is politically dumber and more gullible, the average conservative or the average liberal…

But here’s reason number #23,514,938 to go with liberal on that question.

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Wesley is the author/owner at HumbleLibertarian.com and has been writing prolifically in favor of more freedom and less government since 2008.