Obama Bailout Buddies

There are some strange relationships involved in the Obama bailout resolution, you know, the tentative one he said he deserved all the credit for?   Well, I’m no economist, so I don’t know what it all means, but some things just don’t feel right, you know?  Obama said that he’s been on the phone 24/7 with Henry Paulson, you know, the guy from Goldman Sachs, the one who headed up the midwestern division out of Chicago?  Anyway, he and Obama have been jawing pretty regularly, according to Obama, who says he just wants to protect the little guy in all this.  Oh, really?  How much of the 700 billion do we get?

Some people speculate that maybe the Paulson/Goldman Sachs thingy is a bit “suspect.”  Ya think?  What about the fact that Goldman Sachs has contributed so much money to the Obama campaign, more than anybody else?   And what to make of the 5 billion dollar investment Warren Buffet made in Goldman Sachs just the other day?  Warren Buffet, another telephone buddy of Barack Obama.

American Spectator blog via Chicagoans Against Obama alleges that the cozy relationship between Obama and Goldman Sachs has been recently beneficial regarding bailout negotiations:

When Sen. Barack Obama was given the floor to speak during White House negotiations, according to White House aides, he did so raising concerns about a House Republican alternative to the Paulson/Bernanke $700 billion bailout. But those concerns weren’t necessarily his, as he was not aware of the GOP plan before reviewing notes provided him by Paulson loyalists in Treasury prior to entering the meeting.

According to an Obama campaign source, the notes were passed to Obama via senior aides traveling with him, who had been emailed the document via a current Goldman Sachs employee and Wall Street fundraiser for the Obama campaign. “It was made clear that the memo was from ‘friends’ and was reliable,” says the campaign source.

On Friday, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley changed status from investment banks to bank holding companies.  From Time:

The Federal Reserve said Sunday it had granted a request by the country’s last two major investment banks — Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — to change their status to bank holding companies.

The Fed announced that it had approved the request of the two investment banks. The change in status will allow them to create commercial banks that will be able to take deposits, bolstering the resources of both institutions.

The change continued the biggest restructuring on Wall Street since the Great Depression.

According to CNN Money/Fortune, Obama has a pretty stellar economic team, including Jason Furman, his economic policy advisor:

That bench also includes poverty expert Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute; Austan Goolsbee, the University of Chicago economist who has been at Obama’s side since the start of the race; and Georgetown University law professor Daniel Tarullo. Investor Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker top off the list of regular advisers. A larger circle also includes CEOs Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo (PEP, Fortune 500), and Eric Schmidt of Google (GOOG, Fortune 500).

The Telegraph UK lists a few other Obama money folks:

Obama’s main public support comes from Penny Pritzker, whose Chicago-based clan is one of the wealthiest in America, and JP Morgan Chase’s head of corporate responsibility William Daley, whose brother, Richard, just happens to be Chicago’s mayor.

In July, Obama rallied the guys ’round the table for the bi-partisan “group I will be convening periodically over the next few months,” CBS News reported:

The list of attendees was long and impressive: Warren Buffett participated by phone; former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J.; Gov. Jon Corzine, D-N.J.; JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, former SEC Chairman under President Bush, William Donaldson; Chairman of Pepsi, Indra Nooyi; Former Treasury Secretary under Bush, Paul O’Neill; Former Treasury Secretary under President Clinton, Robert Reich; Google CEO, Eric Schmidt; AFL-CIO President John Sweeney; former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, among others.

The JP Morgan Chase/Obama relationship is interesting because of recent moves the company has made.  Said to be largely unaffected by the subprime mortgage mess, JPM  has been involved in the Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual deals/rescues.  CNN says of the second acquisition of the year by company CEO Jamie Dimon:

The acquisition is JPMorgan Chase’s second major purchase this year following the mid-March acquisition of investment bank Bear Stearns, a deal that was also engineered by the government.

MSNBC’s take on the March events:

Bear Stearns, one of the nation’s biggest and most prominent investment banks, stunned Wall Street Friday by announcing it had turned to rival JP Morgan Chase and the federal government for an emergency bailout.

The surprise, last-ditch rescue effort, announced just before the stock market opened, was the latest troubling sign of how a cascading credit crisis is threatening the liquidity of even Wall Street’s most established firms.

Though it’s hard to see how Obama might have directly influenced anything so far, there’s no doubt he and JPM CEO Jamie Dimon have a relationship.  In July, he told CNN/Fortune:

I got to know Jamie Dimon quite well when he was in Chicago. I think he’s a very smart person, and I think he’s doing his best to manage his bank under difficult circumstances.

The Wall Street Journal claims Dimon is on the short-list for Secretary of the Treasury in an Obama administration, though Timothy Geithner is said to be the front-runner:

Geithner is a solid choice in many ways: he has plenty of Treasury experience and he played a leading role in this year’s Bear Stearns drama that was a critical point in the credit crunch. Should he win the post, it would be at the expense of several prominent current and former Wall Street bankers–including prominent Democratic contributors–who names have been floated as candidates for the job.

Two others mentioned in that Real Time Economics post are J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine.

I guess it’s good to know that while Senator Obama is diligently looking out for the little guy, he has so many big guys on his side.  I mean, the guy involved with some of the more interesting aspects of the country’s corporate restructuring is flying under the radar as one of Obama’s most trusted advisers.  You’d have to be, to be on the short-list for Treasury Secretary, right?  If this was a Grisham novel, I’d say this would be the guy to watch.  And we’ve barely even mentioned Penny Pritzker.  We’ll save that and some of the other Obama financial team intricacies for later, shall we?

*UPDATE: From AP-Yahoo News, re: the tentative bailout agreement:

While the plan broadly aims to prevent banks from profiting on the sale of troubled assets to the government, there is an exception made for assets acquired in a merger or buyout, or from companies that have filed for bankruptcy.

This detail could allow JPMorgan Chase & Co. to sell toxic mortgages and other assets it gained control of last week when it purchased Washington Mutual Inc. for a higher price than the failed thrift paid for them.

Remember Jamie Dimon?

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Just Say No Deal

Newsweek: Why Black People Should Vote For Obama

That’s not really the premise of the Newsweek article I’m quoting, but it’s the gist.  The article starts with talk-radio host, Michael Baisden asking the question:

‘How do we change our futures now that we have someone who might actually care about us in the race?’

Might?  There’s a black man running for president and black people still aren’t sure he’s down with our program?  This is a good thing?  Anyway, the article quickly devolves into the now tiresomely predictable question supposedly keeping black people up at night, “what if he loses?”  (Cue scary horror movie music with offstage scream, here.)  Of course, the first person asked is…Snoop Dogg:

“People that I know that have never cared about politics are registering to vote this time: gang members, ex-cons, you name it,” says rapper Snoop Dogg. “I hate to see a lot of that hope go down the drain, and if he loses, it will.”

I’m sure Camp O will be encouraged to know their “gang member, ex-con get out the vote” efforts are working.  We are then introduced to various reasons black people are supporting Obama, like, he’s married to a black woman:

“I’ve never forgotten that he is a smart, articulate black man with a smart, articulate black wife,” says Linda Wright, 34, a nurse’s assistant from Houston.

Our kids like him:

“My kids love Obama and they think it’s so obvious he should be the president,” says actor D. L. Hughley.

And, if he loses, we’ll be pissed:

“I’m going to be mad, real mad, if he doesn’t win,” says Daetwon Fisher, 21, a construction worker from Long Beach, Calif. “Because for him to come this far and lose will be just shady and a slap in black people’s faces.

Daetwon is also down for whatever if that happens:

I know there is already talk about protests and stuff if he loses, and I’m down for that.”

Baisden’s pleas for people to chill show that his heart is in the right place, even though his logic is faulty:

“Look, if he loses we have no one to blame but ourselves because that meant we all didn’t go out and vote in the numbers we should have,” says Baisden. “Yes, people will be upset, but it will be in a productive way. There will be a rational reaction if things are fair.”

Uh, Mike, every black person in America could vote for Obama twice and he’d still lose if that’s the only support he gets.  Good to know that as long as things are not perceived to be “shady” we won’t riot, like the racists keep saying we will.  As far as I’m concerned, anybody who pushes that garbage, black or white, for whatever reason, is racist.  And you know what, it’s even good to know that people like Jacon Richmond, who served time for marijuana possession and once thought voting was pointless, is now feeling empowered, even though it’s kind of sad that he’s still not sure exactly how to feel:

“I know it’s crazy to go from not thinking a black man counts to thinking one should win the president of the United States for sure, but I’m not sure how I’ll handle that if it doesn’t happen.”

While I certainly understand the expressed sentiments, I can’t get past the word “might” in the first statement.  That black Americans are being exploited to vote for a man they’re not 100% convinced is on their side after damned near 2 years of campaigning, pisses me off.  And you can add that to the laundry list of reasons why this black woman won’t vote for him; right under number one, his race-baiting sucks.

h/t: HillBuzz

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Just Say No Deal

Running For King Of The World

In Friday’s debate, Barack Obama made a big deal about his ability to restore America’s world image.  Why should that be a big deal?  Is it?  Business Week debates whether when you get right down to it, the world might be initially pleased with a president so far from Bush on so many levels, (though really, the main difference is probably physical, imho) ultimately, will they be disappointed?  And, more importantly, exactly how is he going to accomplish such a thing?

CNN reports that Obama somehow relates world image to national security.  On the question of the potential of another 9/11:

McCain that another attack on the scale of the September 11 hijackings is “much less likely” now than it was the day after the terrorist attacks.

“America is safer now than it was on 9/11,” he said, “But we have a long way to go before we can declare America safe.”

Obama agreed that the United States is “safer in some ways” but said the country needed to focus more on issues such as nuclear non-proliferation and restoring America’s image in the world.

This is a song Camp O has been singing for months now, and it makes no more difference (or sense) to me now than it did when I first heard it.  Are we supposed to give up nukes so people will come play with us?  Why are so many people so concerned with who we elect as president, anyway?  Are they really, or is this just more Axelrod astroturfing?  There’s a World Wants Obama Coalition on the net, MoveOn.org has a page, “Obama in 30 Seconds,” with a diplomacy section dedicated to quick validation of the idea; who can forget his World Tour Like A Rock Star and the now famous, World Wants Obama poll?  Maybe Axelrod read Dennis Ross’ book, “Statecraft: And How To Restore America’s Standing In The World,” and took it to heart, though I’m not sure either one of us buys the whole “chicken-and-egg” premise that if people like what they think about you, the threat of danger is automatically sufficiently minimized.  Unless he’s making the case that for terrorists, to know us is to love us, what is the point of giving a good hot damn what the rest of the world thinks?  And, who would say that with a straight face?  That’s kind of a “blame the victim in advance” sucker bait attitude, in my opinion.  When you sit down to talk to foreign leaders, with or without pre-conditions, how effective can you be if you’re preoccupied with getting them to like you?  If the country is being governed properly, world respect will come.  If all it takes is having a guy with the “right look” to get the globe on board, maybe their opinion isn’t really worth cultivating.  At least, that’s what my mama taught me.

And, I’m sure Axelbama knows it, too.

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Just Say No Deal