So, President Obama has now addressed the Wall Street people who fleeced him and his rookie administration earlier this year, telling them that the next time they screw up so bad, no more Mr. NIce Guy. Appearing in New York, the president warned of new regulations coming to make sure these clowns don’t get so greedy and larcenous again, sort of like shopping for a lock well after the horses have escaped through a giant archway on the other side of the barn. Outside of a very few horses, it’s pretty much the same herd that rode our economy off a cliff in 2008. Few heads rolled on Wall Street and it’s the usual suspects still in charge of all the money.
Between his speech to Congress about health care and this address to the financial community, it sounds like Obama is finally realizing that, in the words of W.C. Fields: “the highways are banked with marauders.” Unfortunately, business and politics are not universally populated with earnest individuals bent on doing what is best for the nation in the long run, instead being heavily laden with instant gratification junkies and partisan hacks who consider only the source of new ideas, never their merits. The long view is the wrong view for such children in adult clothing, and lasting achievements mean very little to them.
The Republicans, whose party was unceremoniously dumped from power by the American people, have not bowed to their wisdom and judgement and are treating the lawfully elected Obama Administration and the 111th Congress as traitorous usurpers of their God-given power. They heckle the president, spread vicious lies and attempt to sabotage anything attempted by any Democrat, no matter what is merits. While many Republican heads did roll in the election of 2008, the remaining ones continue to act like the president needs them when in fact he does not. He has the votes to pass his program without them, yet he continues to reach out to them to be a part of the solution rather than continuing to be grumbling outsiders. It is only their vanquisher who keeps them at all in the loop, and they just don’t get it. Looks like they prefer public idiocy.
So far they have proven the American electorate to be absolutely correct for tossing them out on their ears. The remaining sour grapes crew has with few exceptions acquitted themselves shamefully and have expended no effort at all to come up with any ideas of their own other than sabotage. The financial bosses, on the other hand, having had an equally disastrous 2008, have survived nearly intact. Other than a very few firings and some of them getting arrested and slapped in the slammer, the vast majority of the financial industry’s boardrooms have the same look as they did before they nearly blew up the most successful economy in the history of mankind.
To anyone holding a job of any sort, the fact that these people are still employed in any capacity at all is astounding. Who could imagine still having a job after nearly ruining not only your own company, but thousands of others? It used to be only the Mob who rewarded grand larceny by their chief executives. Now it’s our banks, investment houses, credit cards companies and insurance firms. After shaking down the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration for trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts to save their greedy butts from bankruptcy, they’re now back to shaking down their stockholders for huge bonuses and creating new shady investment schemes to sell to a gullible public.
They were the ones who should have been heckling the president during his speech and smirking like Chesire Cats with their mouths full of taxpayer mice. Unlike their counterparts in the Republican Party, they were not removed from power. Any laws passed to regulate their behavior now cannot change the damage they have already done, the lives they have ruined and the unemployment their recklessness has caused. Not that they care about any of that, nor do they have any reverence at all for their predecessors who carefully built the vast financial empires that they have come to think of their personal bank accounts, existing only to maintain their princely lifestyles.
These industries made their executives wealthy to a man, yet somehow this was not enough for them. They wanted their wealth to be greater than that of kings, and automatic, whether or not they ran their companies well or ran them into the ground. How would that work for most workers? And how will having these thieves and bumblers continuing to handle all the money work out for America? The same people who nicknamed themselves “Masters of The Universe” and then proved themselves to be no more than master escape artists when their larceny and incompetence were uncovered and they escaped getting fired and sent to jail.
The Republicans are jealous, wondering why they are ridiculed and marginalized for doing pretty much the same things during their 8 years in power. Who can forget their transfer of trillions of dollars from the pockets of the working classes to the super wealthy? Or how about their throwing an anchor to New Orleans while it was drowning? A real laugh riot, eh? Or attacking the wrong country, blowing it up and giving Shotgun Dick Cheney’s company the contract to rebuild the joint? Priceless! And what about all that whacky torture and domestic spying while they used the Bill of Rights for toilet paper? Top that! Now, if America could only figure out a way to put the Masters of The Universe on the sidelines we could have two sets of amusing powerless clowns to entertain us. Unfortunately, the bonus boys seem to be getting the last laugh, and we’re all laughing so hard along with them that it hurts. A lot.