Disappeared News: After he’s president, maybe he can work for a big bank

Friday, January 08, 2010

After he’s president, maybe he can work for a big bank

by Larry Geller

Obama to the right of John McCain? Check out this article in OpEd News by Richard Clark (snippet):

Candidate Obama repeatedly blasted Phil Gramm and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which Gramm had pushed through Congress with President Bill Clinton's support. This was legislation that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act and thereby radically deregulated the financial industry, allowing hundreds of billions of new profits to be made by Wall Street, at great cost to the American public.
But now John McCain and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. have sponsored a bill to repeal Gramm's bank-friendly legislation, while captive Obama seeks to preserve it! [OpEdNews, Is Obama a captive of America's most powerful banks and corporations?, 1/7/2010]

McCain probably stands with the majority of Americans while Obama is viewed as owned by banks and his Clinton-era bankster appointees.

How odd that it now remains for John McCain to stand up to the oversized and overly powerful banks:
"I want to ensure that we never stick the American taxpayer with another $700 billion--or even larger--tab to bail out the financial industry," McCain proclaimed in introducing his legislation. "This country would be better served if we limit the activities of these financial institutions."
As we all know, just the opposite had happened under the great bailout: The big investment houses of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were allowed to suddenly attain the status of commercial banks in order to qualify for federal bailouts, and the once staid commercial Bank of America was encouraged by the Fed to buy out the investment house Merrill Lynch. As a result, banking has never before been concentrated in so few hands.

Expect more Democrat retirements as they realize that voter support will evaporate if job loss and foreclosures continue towards election day 2012. Instead of delivering change, Congress and Obama have saved only their banker buddies. Equally bad, they are now saving insurance and drug companies at our expense.

This is not the change we expected.

At least, Obama will find a warm welcome on Wall Street as he hunts for a new job in 2013. The rest of the country may still be unemployed.