Posted by Tina
When President Obama was asked last week about the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon and the $9 million bonus for Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein he responded by saying,
“I know both these guys; they are very savvy businessmen. I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth.”
Hmmm…that doesn’t jibe with what he said last December on 60 Minutes:
“I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.”
And it doesn’t jibe with the message delivered to banks by Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, in January of 2009:
“People really hate you, and they’re starting to hate us because we’re hanging out with you. And you have to help us deal with that. ** The chances of talking the American public out of this kind of attitude are zero. There is now a deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American at what he or she thinks is a very unfair set of arrangements.”
Oh brother…what exactly do the President and Chairman Frank mean? That banks need to provide an excuse for the excesses and manipulations of Frank and his cohorts in Congress? That after making deals and promises in exchange for huge campaign contributions business execs should take the blame and a pay cut to hide the failures of our representatives?
And what are we to think of the utter silence from these powerful Democrats on the bonuses being handed to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac CEO’s at a time when those two institutions are still bleeding red ink, as they love to say when discussing the harm done to the economy by their careless manipulations. These two institutions provided politicians cover for the stupid regulatory scheme they devised to force banks to lend to people that were not qualified and couldn’t pay for their mortgages…until that house of cards came tumbling down. Even after that fatal economic mess they haven’t learned a thing. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The Federal Housing Finance Agency approved compensation plans for Fannie Chief Executive Michael Williams and Freddie CEO Charles Haldeman Jr…in a range of $4 million to $6 million…” Fannie and Freddie have also lost billions of dollars over the past year even though they received $110 Billion in government (taxpayer) capital. It all sounds extremely fat to me.
The biggest fat cats in this trail of feline tomfoolery are the people in Washington who write the regulatory laws that Wall Street and banks, and you and I, must live by. They are the people in Washington who have compromised principles, honor, and common sense in order to manipulate outcomes of various types, both for their own personal benefit and within the fabric of our society (social engineering).
Americans want public servants that support individual freedom, a strong economy, and who will promote the general well-being of all Americans. We are a diverse nation of rich, poor, and middle class people. Most of us are capable if givenenough opportunity. What we need is for the fat cats in government to stop tinkering with our laws. We need them to make laws that are simple and easy to follow. We need them to get out of the way and quit gumming up the works. In fact it wouldn’t hurt to restructure how our federal lawmakers work so they spend less time in Washington.
Continued fat cat deal making in DC is something we definitely don’t need!
PS…many thanks to the unnamed model in the photo!