Obama’s “Get Tough on Banks” Again Tries to Play the Public for Fools

Editor's Note:  This post was posted to this site (and to GoldmanSachs666) as a comment by an Anonymous reader.  I felt it was worthy of its' own post.  The post was taken from an article posted in naked capitalism.  Thank you to the reader who commented.   Read the full article...click here

But more is that FDR from the very outset set himself up as an opponent of rule by the banking classes. He depicts them as failures and calls them unscrupulous and selfish. By contrast, have were ever heard Obama even hint that bankers were less than ethical? Let’s see, last December, he called them “fat cats“! Ah yes, of course, everyone knows a cat will steal a sardine if you aren’t watching. Yeah, that Obama sure knows how to dress those bankers down!

As we discussed at greater length earlier this week, this new “get our money back” idea is pure three card Monte. Put the spotlight on the TARP so everyone will ignore all the other massive subsidies that the banks have gotten, continue to receive, and are abusing. Those who claim many banks have “paid back the TARP” are missing (more likely choosing to obfuscate) the point: the TARP calculus grossly understates of the gives and the gets here (although as we have said before and will say again, Obama’s focus on the TARP is pure political expediency).

But this time, the Fed supports are far less covert (kinda hard to miss the ballooning of its balance sheet) and the banks are being pigs and undermining the purpose of this operation by skimming way too much off in employee pay. But it certainly appears no one has called the bankers into a private meeting and threatened them (and the regulators do hold the whip hand, even if they have been brainwashed into not recognizing that). Bernanke seems unable to see how his whole market manipulation program has been repurposed by the industry into welfare for the rich.

More important, despite the firms’ claims otherwise, >they are now effectively backstopped by the government, and they know it. They should be paying insurance premiums, NOW, hefty ones, for being beneficiaries of the “No more Lehmans” policy. But there is no desire for anything remotely resembling a full accounting from the crew in the Administration.

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