Tag: wall street

Of *course* Corporate America hasn’t been disrupted! This is the *Obama* administration!

They have no desire to change the system!

Existing, established companies that can be locked into a profitable relationship with government (well, profitable for the government) are to be preferred. The smaller, newer companies don’t know their place. They don’t know how to grease the wheels, show proper respect, and/or come to an understanding. Why, some of their CEOs or owners don’t even rush to give former administration officials cushy jobs! Continue reading Of *course* Corporate America hasn’t been disrupted! This is the *Obama* administration!

Wall Street insider trading over #obamacare?

Could be, could be: “Wall Street investors hungry for advance information on upcoming federal health-care decisions repeatedly held private discussions with Obama administration officials, including a top White House adviser helping to implement the Affordable Care Act.”  Mind you, the Obama administration pinky-swears that noting bad happened:

There is no evidence that the private discussions with the two administration officials about health-care decisions provided investors with confidential agency information or that the investors made trades based on what they learned.

But this sort of intelligence gathering has been drawing attention from lawmakers and federal investigators who are looking at whether some traders are gaining access to information that is not available to investors in general or the wider public.

So I guess it depends on whether you trust the Obama administration or not.  And, really, who among us has any reason not to? …except for conservatives, Republicans, reporters, State Department staffers, pot legalization activists, BATFE field agents, Border Patrol agents, or Mexican nationals, of course…

Wall Street teaches causality to Barack Obama.

It would seem that President Obama seems to have a bit of a problem with the concept of “cause and effect.” This is hardly surprising – the man is essentially a glorified political science major* – but it is, upon reflection, a bit awkward.  Seeing as the man will still be president for about seven months, and thus technically responsible for the country in that time period, it’s probably best if the rest of us provide Barack Obama with some practical examples of the concept.

So, let us do so.

Continue reading Wall Street teaches causality to Barack Obama.

#rsrh Wall Street’s Business as Usual?

Now this, ladies and gentlemen, is a rant.

For a few measly millions, Wall Street not only bought itself a president, but got the start-up firm of B. H. Obama & Co. LLC to throw a cabinet into the deal, too — on remarkably generous terms. President Obama, for a guy prone to delivering prim and smug little homilies denouncing greed, greed, greed — the only of the seven deadly sins that truly offends Democrats (though Mrs. Obama has done some desultory work on gluttony) — is strangely comfortable among the Gordon Gekkos of this world. Shall we have a partial roll call? Beat the drum slowly and call out the names: With unemployment still topping 9 percent, the catastatic world economy teetering on the brink of another, even larger financial catastrophe, and trillion-dollar U.S. deficits as far as the green-shaded eye can see, let’s hear it for Obama’s first National Economic Council director, Lawrence Summers (of hedge-fund giant D. E. Shaw and venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz), who has had some nice paydays courtesy of Lehman Bros., JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup. Let’s hear it for Citigroup’s Michael Froman, deputy assistant to the president and deputy national-security adviser for international economic affairs, for Hartford Financial’s Neal Wolin, deputy Treasury secretary, for JPMorgan’s William Daley, Obama’s chief of staff, and for his predecessor, Rahm Emanuel of Wasserstein Perella. Let’s hear it for Fannie Mae’s Tom Donilon, national-security adviser. (No, seriously: One of the luminous interstellar geniuses who brought Fannie Mae to its current aphotic state of affairs, upside down to the tune of trillions of dollars, is running national security, and the former director of the White House Military Office, Louis Caldera, was on the board of IndyMac when it finally went toes up — sleep tight, America!) And, lest we forget, let’s have three big, sloppy cheers for economic-transition team leaders Robert Rubin (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup) and folksy tax enthusiast/ghoulish billionaire vulture Warren Buffett.

And it goes on for five more pages.

Continue reading #rsrh Wall Street’s Business as Usual?

#rsrh Scenes from the Crass Muddle in Lower Broadway*.

I can’t tell for the life of me how Aaron Gell of the New York Observer was appalled by the level of sophistication, awareness, and/or revolutionary consciousness being shown by those goofy kids up there protesting Wall Street:

“What are you doing here?” we asked.

“Oh, we’re just here, like, you know, protesting what’s going on,” she replied.

“Cool, what specifically?” we asked.

“Everything going on, I mean. Take your pick!”

Her name was Jenna. We secretly hoped she was from Portland.

I mean, you can read it equally easily as being an appalled These kids are making a mockery of our country’s desperate need to put everybody on Wall Street into a giant wicker man and set it on fire in order to appease the incomprehensible Money Demons** or an amused appalled Wow, so this is what it’s like to think “these damn dirty hippies need to go find a real job.  Either way works for me, and while I wouldn’t wish the mindset of the former interpretation on my worst enemy I also have zero sympathy for anybody who embraces such a strange and frankly self-destructive worldview on their own***.  So, really, win for me either way.

Via Hot Air Headlines, which found the same quote hilarious.

Moe Lane

Continue reading #rsrh Scenes from the Crass Muddle in Lower Broadway*.

Schumer, Gillibrand, and the Wall Street payoffs.

Via Jen Rubin:

Wall Street money rains on Schumer

Wall Street has showered nearly $11 million on the Senate since the beginning of the year, and more than 15 percent of it has gone to a single senator: Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York.

[snip]

Of the $10.6 million the industry has given to sitting senators this year, more than $7.7 million has gone to Democrats. Schumer got his $1.65 million; his New York colleague Kirsten Gillibrand took in $886,000; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada received $814,000; Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut scored $603,000; Colorado freshman Michael Bennet got $401,000; and Agriculture Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas— who will have a big say on the derivatives portion of regulatory reform — got $336,000.

Mind you, it’s a perfectly rational decision on Wall Street’s part: paying protection money often is. Despite Yahoo/Politico’s somewhat disingenuous suggestion of ‘Stockholm Syndrome,’ what actually is happening here is a trade. Wall Street gives Schumer – and his new junior partner Gillibrand* – money, and Schumer makes sure that all those potentially fatal regulations and restrictions and investigations that Schumer says and talks about never happen. Remember, this is the guy who declared that the American people don’t care about “little porky amendments:” he’s about as populist as T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII. Continue reading Schumer, Gillibrand, and the Wall Street payoffs.

Rich Obama supporters start realize that he’s talking about *them*.

Avoid schadenfreude.

Look, I understand the temptation to mock. I really do.

Barack Obama’s rich supporters fear his tax plans show he’s a class warrior

Wealthy Wall Street financiers and other business figures provided crucial support for Mr Obama during the election, backing him over the Republican candidate John McCain as the right leader to rescue the collapsing US economy.

But it is now dawning on many among them that Mr Obama was serious about his campaign trail promises to bring root and branch reform to corporate America – and that they were more than just election rhetoric.

A top Obama fundraiser and hedge fund manager said: “I’m appalled at the anti-Wall Street rhetoric. It was OK on the campaign but now it’s the real world. I’m surprised that Obama is turning out to be so left-wing. He’s a real class warrior.”

It’s a powerful temptation; worse and worse, it’s a justified one. You knew and I knew that this was going to happen. You knew and I knew that the upper classes were going to be subject to the Democrats’ faux-populism soon enough. You knew and I knew that they were going to raise tax rates on the wealthy, and never mind that it won’t actually work. And you knew and I knew that when Rahm Emanuel informed the world that you never let a good crisis go to waste, he meant it.  So, it seems almost a duty to mock the people who are just now coming to the realization that they’re not only going to get beaten with clubs; they’re going to get beaten with the clubs that they themselves have paid for. Continue reading Rich Obama supporters start realize that he’s talking about *them*.