On a day when Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) appear before Congress seeking unprecedented power to further loot manipulate regulate the financial industry, including non-banking entities like AIG, the company whose bonuses they’ve been called on the carpet to address, perusal of the day’s news stories, blog posts, and opinion pieces reveals more questions than answers. Is this the bizarre Obministration Hokey Pokey Bamboozle One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Cha-Cha-Cha it appears to be, or are the Obanomic efforts of the government so far truly on behalf of the people?
Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall wonders if we are living in an “alternate universe” after reading today’s Wall Street Journal article claiming that the Obministration has had a recent change of heart towards Wall Street, itself. I’m not sure what exactly it is about the Journal’s conclusions that has Marshall’s knickers in a twist, but one of the passages that jumped out at me lead me to believe that the article’s writer is completely full of hooey. Rather than eschew a close working Wall Street relationship as Monica Langley claims, it seems to me that Barack Obama was bought, paid for and hand-delivered to the White House courtesy of the banksters he now serves. Though Ms. Langley spends a lot of ink chronicling the many instances where Obacolytes paid lip service to being critical of the “dirty bankers” that financed his campaign and advised his every move during his presidential run, she ignores the obvious fact that he’s been “dirty banker” pocket lint all along. Here’s the part that leapt off my page:
Early on, Obama aides had had little to do with Wall Street heavyweights such as J.P. Morgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon. On March 11, Mr. Dimon was ushered into the White House and Treasury Department, where advisers brain-stormed with him about how banks and markets would react to their emerging policies. The following day, at a White House meeting, business executives implored Mr. Obama to get credit flowing again. “All right,” the president said, according to a transcript of the meeting. He’d have his people “talk to Jamie.”
That’s it? Is she kidding? The “talk to Jamie” exchange wasn’t at just any “White House meeting,” it occurred during the March 12 Business Roundtable when Obama responded to Citibank CEO Richard Parsons that the previously “catastrophic” economy was suddenly “not as bad as we think.” And, he didn’t say he’d get “his people” to talk to Jamie, he said he would. From the Journal’s own transcript:
MR. PARSONS: So take it down to our industry, the banking business. At its core, it’s a very simple business: It takes funds from depositors and other providers of funding, and then it makes those funds available in the credit markets. And that’s how businesses grow, when people buy homes, and send their kids to college, buy cars, and all that sort of stuff.
THE PRESIDENT: Can I just say, Dick, it hasn’t been that simple lately. (Laughter.) But I get your theory, though.
MR. PARSONS: I said at its core.
THE PRESIDENT: All right, I’ll talk to Jamie. Maybe that’s — (laughter.)
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So I am very confident about our long-term prospects. We live in such a rapid-fire information-rich environment that people’s attention spans go like this. And that makes for volatility in confidence. A smidgen of good news, and suddenly everything is doing great. A little bit of bad news — oh, we’re down in the dumps. And I am obviously an object of this constantly varying assessment. (Laughter.) I’m the Object-in-Chief of this varying assessment. (Laughter.)
Not only is it clear that Obama and Geithner and all the rest of the Keystone Kop Obministration say one thing to Americans understandably upset by their power-grabbing, Wall Street serving actions, as they continue to do their Bankster Masters’ bidding uninterrupted, right in front of our faces, any “journalist” who accepts anything said by anyone associated with them, at face value, collects a paycheck under false pretenses.
Jamie Dimon, New York Federal Reserve Board of Directors member and CEO of new plane-buying JP Morgan Chase, has been on Obama’s economic team for months, if not years. Their relationship stretches back to Chicago when Dimon was parlaying his reluctantly accepted position at Bank One (after being unceremoniously dumped by Citigroup’s Sandy Weill, his former “mentor”) into his current job. In a July, 2008 CNN Money/Fortune interview, Obama was asked to name CEO’s he admired. After dropping Warren Buffet’s name, he was asked if he was on a cell phone basis with the investor (Buffet):
Obama: I call him, yes. He’s one of the most refreshing people. He’s one of those rare people who is exactly how you hope he will be. He’s just completely down to earth and is as smart as they come. Really a wise, wise person. 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.
A simple search through my archives will reveal that Dimon has been on my “more to this than meets the eye” radar for months. If Obama even hints that he’s been consulting with this guy throughout the bailout process (which he did) you’d think that any “journalist” worth his or her salt would break their neck chasing that particular red flag down, whether Obi’s “aides” were privy to the meetings, or not.
If AIG “highlights broad failures of our financial system,” as Geithner told Congress, and Obama really doesn’t want to “choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy,” as he wrote in his 30 paper op-ed, we need to know if the Obministration’s ties to companies like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, two of the biggest donors to his campaign, directly influence their policy making, and how. Perhaps the reason the Pretendident has so much trouble tempering the public’s furor when he talks out of both sides of his mouth about whether people should be as angry as he pretends to be before he vows not to “govern out of anger,” is because he and especially, his Boy Wonder’s, loyalites remain suspect:
As it happens, Mr. Geithner used to be a Republican and changed his voter registration — to Independent — only in the late 1990s, when he became under secretary for international affairs in the Clinton administration.
They, (the administration) are systematically eroding the individualism of the American People.
These socialistic policies that are being promoted by the current administration, and congress, are going to yank this country into an area, politically, and economically, that will take years to get out of.
There are too many backroom policies being construed and thrust into a congress that is entranced with a president that has no sense of the situation of the people, along with the democratic majority in congress that has an agenda that will destroy this economy as we know it.
All I hear from them is liberal rhetoric.
All I hear from them is a massive power grab.
Pelosi, Reid, and OB’s administration all are a menace to this country.
In 2010, I think we’ll see a more intelligent voting force.