Why in the HELL is Matt Taibbi

shocked Obama is the neoliberal he ALWAYS was, not the pseudoliberal, pseudoprogressive rock star hero of the election campaign?

Why should ANYBODY be surprised he's giving handouts to Wall Street (while of course screwing over Main Street)? Why should anybody be surprised he is marginalizing or asking those who care about Main Street to hit the road? Why should anybody be surprised he is further manning his administration with Wall Street hacks? Why should anybody be surprised he's doing little about job creation, which is necessary to get this economy out of the ditch? Just ask WHERE all of the money donated to his campaign came from, and it wasn't just from small donors, either.

My initial belief of Obama being a "ringer" is coming to pass, I am afraid. I don't want it to be so.

Taibbi:

These are the kinds of voters whom Obama's gang of Wall Street advisers is counting on: idiots. People whose votes depend not on whether the party in power delivers them jobs or protects them from economic villains, but on what cultural markers the candidate flashes on TV. Finance reform has become to Obama what Iraq War coffins were to Bush: something to be tucked safely out of sight.

Around the same time that finance reform was being watered down in Congress at the behest of his Treasury secretary, Obama was making a pit stop to raise money from Wall Street. On October 20th, the president went to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York and addressed some 200 financiers and business moguls, each of whom paid the maximum allowable contribution of $30,400 to the Democratic Party. But an organizer of the event, Daniel Fass, announced in advance that support for the president might be lighter than expected — bailed-out firms like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs were expected to contribute a meager $91,000 to the event — because bankers were tired of being lectured about their misdeeds.

"The investment community feels very put-upon," Fass explained. "They feel there is no reason why they shouldn't earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don't want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown."

Which makes sense. Shit, who could blame the investment community for the meltdown? What kind of assholes are we to put any of this on them?

This is the kind of person who is working for the Obama administration, which makes it unsurprising that we're getting no real reform of the finance industry. There's no other way to say it: Barack Obama, a once-in-a-generation political talent whose graceful conquest of America's racial dragons en route to the White House inspired the entire world, has for some reason allowed his presidency to be hijacked by sniveling, low-rent shitheads. Instead of reining in Wall Street, Obama has allowed himself to be seduced by it, leaving even his erstwhile campaign adviser, ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker, concerned about a "moral hazard" creeping over his administration.


Since the GOP is on the ropes and has run out of gas, it's time for the corporate/Wall Street interests to contaminate the Democratic Party. Obama was their tool.

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