Obama goes cap in hand to Wall Street

[Hannah Bell]

Speaking at Federal Hall, only a few steps from the New York Stock Exchange, Obama outlined his regulatory proposals, which have stalled in Congress since their release in June in large part because of opposition from many of the 150 bankers, traders and financial executives who were assembled to hear his speech. Despite the fact that they and their peers have profited immensely from the multi-trillion-dollar bailout engineered by Obama and his predecessor, they gave his remarks a decidedly cold reception, applauding only once during his 30-minute speech.

In what was meant to give the appearance of a stern rebuke, Obama declared, “I want everybody here to hear my words. We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess...Wall Street took these words with the huge grain of salt they merit. The bankers and speculators who precipitated the crisis know full well that everything the Obama administration has done since taking office has been directed toward protecting their wealth...And they correctly took Obama’s announcement last month that he was reappointing Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve chairman as a signal that they had nothing to fear from his administration...

Not a single significant restriction has been imposed on the banks that were bailed out with taxpayer money. Bank profits are once again rising and executive pay is soaring, in some cases, such as at Goldman Sachs, hitting record levels...

Obama took care to balance his verbal wrist-slaps with paeans to the capitalist market. He declared, “I’ve always been a strong believer in the power of the free market...He went further, implicating the American people in an economic catastrophe for which they bear no responsibility and whose victims they are. “The crisis was not just the result of decisions made by the mightiest of financial firms,” he declared. “It was also the result of decisions made by ordinary Americans to open credit cards and take on mortgages...a collective failure of responsibility in Washington, on Wall Street and across America…”

Obama characterized his regulatory proposals as “the most ambitious overhaul of the financial system since the Great Depression.” ...On the contrary, he is opposing the restoration of any of the key elements of New Deal banking reforms that have been dismantled over the past three decades. This includes the Glass-Steagall ban on investment banking by commercial banks...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/obam-s15.shtml

[Electric Monk]

1. Quite the rec/unrec duel going on over this thread

I saw it up to 10 recs earlier, now it's down to 6, I wonder where that'll end up?

[pa28]

2. Wall Street can hardly believe it's luck. Instead of pitchforks they got buckets of money.

I happened to watch Kudlow today and believe it or not he was slamming the banking industry for it's continued risk taking as well as the government for subsidizing that risk. He said the taxpayers were unjustly on the hook for losses while continuing to underwrite massive personal fortunes in the financial industry.

Not exactly a news flash to us but when a Wall Street creature like Kudlow thinks the greed has gone too far and echoes the editorial content of the world socialist web site nearly word for word . . . I'd say that's striking at the very least.

[Hannah Bell]

3. kick

[Orwellian_Ghost]

4. Oh please

that's just teabaggerism, Naderite lunacy, hate spewing, Leninist, Trotskyite, burn the system craziness.

I don't really have any refutations of substance but this piece of crap from that leftist rag is just negative nellie teabaggerism, Naderite...

Rinse-Repeat

[KG]

5. !

:rofl:

[blindpig]

8. You forgot...

ponies, PUMAs, purists & dead baby seals.

[anonymous171]

6. Wow. A wsws article that I actually agree with. K&R. nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. Hand meet glove. K&R

[Orwellian_Ghost]

9. Into the negatives

Well the UNREC crew came swarmin' along...

[Hannah Bell]

10. it was up to +10 at one point.

[HamdenRice]

11. Dag, another train unrec! WSWS squeezes out a turd. Hannah Bull smears it all over DU.

No wonder! Is there any piece of shit they squeeze out that you won't happily pick up and throw at the bars of your cage?

Did you even read his speech or any coverage other than from the monkey cage?

[scarletwoman]

12. "Did you even read his speech...?" Words don't mean a thing without some concrete action behind them

Frankly, I'm sick to death of speeches.

[HamdenRice]

13. Proposals for regulatory laws are usually first couched as "words"

Does that count? Did you read the speech? Or do you prefer not to hear the proposals and just bash them a priori?

[scarletwoman]

14. Yes, I read the speech. Lots of references to the need for "common-sense rules".

Is that what you mean by "proposals for regulatory laws"?

As far as I can see, the only concrete proposal forwarded in the speech was for "a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency" -- not exactly what I would call a regulatory law in itself. As he said in the speech, this agency will "enforce those rules" -- but what "those rules" consist of remained undefined and unenumerated.

Everything else was just vague we're going to come up with *something* kind of stuff.

Sorry, I remain unimpressed. Calling for the re-instatement of Glass-Seagal would be a concrete regulatory proposal. Vague rhetoric about the need for undefined "common-sense rules" is not.

sw