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Obama: I Didn't Run For Office To Help 'Fat Cat Bankers'
President Obama takes aim at "fat cat bankers" and their aggressive lobbying efforts to defeat financial reform in an upcoming 60 Minutes interview set to air Sunday evening.
(L-R) Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, American Express CEO Ken Chenault, Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis and American Bankers Association CEO Edward Yingling outside the White House in March. US President Barack Obama has hit out at Wall Street "fat cats," expressing anger that bailed out banks are planning huge bonuses as millions battle poverty and unemployment. (AFP/File/Nicholas Kamm) "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street," Obama tells 60 Minutes'
Steve Kroft. "What's really frustrating me right now is that you've got
these same banks who benefited from taxpayer assistance who are
fighting tooth and nail with their lobbyists ...up on Capitol Hill,
fighting against financial regulatory control."
Efforts by the banking industry to avoid reform may have paid off (financial-services interests spent $344 million on lobbying in the first three quarters of 2009). While the version of the major financial reform bill passed by the House on Friday does create a consumer financial protection agency and limits on derivatives trading, some say that it also includes loopholes. The bill does not include measures that would break up big banks or address the mixing of commercial and investment banking by giant firms like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.
President Obama cheered the House action Friday. "This legislation brings us another important step closer to necessary, comprehensive financial reform that will create clear rules of the road, consistent and systematic enforcement of those rules, and a stronger, more stable financial system..." he said in a statement.
On the topic of executive pay, Kroft asks Obama if he thinks that bailed out banks repayed TARP money just to avoid government oversight on compensation and pay. "I think that in some cases, [to be able to pay bonuses] was the motivation," Obama responds. "Which I think tells me that the people on Wall Street still don't get it...They're still puzzled why it is that people are mad at the banks. Well, let's see. You guys are drawing down 10, 20 million dollar bonuses after America went through the worst economic year...in decades and you guys caused the problem,"
Kroft also questions Obama about the nation's new strategy in Afghanistan. The president weighs in on the timetable of a withdrawal and acknowledges that the U.S. needs more help from Pakistan.
The full interview is set to air Sunday, Dec. 13, at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
- Posted in
95 Comments so far
Show AllObama: I Didn't Run For Office To Help 'Fat Cat Bankers'
YOU LYING SACK OF SHIT!
Obama: I Didn't Run For Office To Help 'Fat Cat Bankers'... it just sort of 'happened'!
________________________________
They followed him home, and Michelle let him keep them after Obama promised that HE'D Be Responsible for Feeding Them and Cleaning Out Their Litter Box-- while THEY'RE cleaning out the rest of us.
I don't intend to watch The Great Impostor, because I know he won't end the sentence as I imagine.
Besides, I want to save myself for the likely Baba Wawa Exclusive Interview with Cheetah Woods, in which HE explains that he had no intention of letting all those women trip over his rampant... driver. But once it happened, it would've been RUDE to just pull the thing away! Cheetah's just the victim of a series of accidents too!
Meanwhile, I must pace myself for the slew of "thoughtful" articles early next week, emphasizing the Positives of the Charlatan-in-Chief's remarks during this Up Close and Personal Teevee Infoganda Interview, and urging us to stay strong and Hold Him to His Words.
· Yr Obd't Servant
OK, THAT was funny. Cheetah Woods. Did you make that up yourself? I really did LOL
Excuse me Mr. Obama, you might not have run for office to help "Fat Cat Bankers" but that is the job you were hired for.
That's right you were hired, You are bought and paid for, and you will do what you are told! You think you got there on your promises of peace, change and hope?! Don't believe your own advertising campaign lies.
You are nothing more than an intelligent well spoken man. You have been chosen to sing sweet nothings into the ears of the simpleton "voters." This while your masters murder, rape and pilladge to serve their disgusting bottomless greed.
Happy Holidays!!
"You are nothing more than an intelligent well spoken man."
I'm beginning to wonder about the "intelligent" part. It would seem that a politician's first priority would be to try to assure re-election. But in Mr. Obama's case, he has not only pissed off and totally alienated his core support but allowed the opposition party (that was almost dead and buried) to come back and paint him as a socialist while STILL trying to appease the opposition who is STILL a minority. He seems to be trying his very hardest to do everything he can possibly do wrong (and succeeding on a grand scale.) This is not the sign of an intelligent man. Frankly, to those who are watching his game plan play out, he seems to be a half bubble off plumb.
Obama: "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street."
Right, but, he cheers the loop-hole laden finance-reform bill that does nothing about creating a consumer-protection agency or breaking up the cartels that financed his campaign. Obama raised at least $3 million from the financial sector that included Goldman-Sachs, Morgan-Stanley, Citicorp, et al.
Bush might be a rattlesnake, but Obama is a copperhead. The difference between the two venomous reptiles is a rattlesnake warns its victim before it strikes.
Cavedweller how very true,the Rattler makes himself obvious,the Pit Viper(Copperhead) prefers a sneak attack.A Republican will run you through with a sword while standing before you shouting insults.A democrat will stab you in the back while he whispers sweet nothings in your left ear.However the pit viper has a weakness,he has a disarming smell of Watermelon.Oh damn, now that sure sounds like a racist comment,but you know, no bigotry intended ,it is actually true! peace
Come next election, we are going to see a snakebit snake.
Poor Barack Obama!
How hard it must be to have to repeatedly keep trying to show us that words no longer have any meaning!
His level of Chicago school "enlightenment" is so far beyond our pathetic human capabilities. It is distressing to see the way we interrupt his supernatural meditative state and he has to repeatedly pull his head out of Larry Summer's ass.
We really are not deserving!
Robber Barons are like that.
If America valued Truth and Justice above Power and Money
then we would not have this catastrophy.
...AND DENNIS KUCINICH WOULD BE IN OFFICE ENDING "WARS" AND CLEANING UP CORPORATE AMERIKA!
Believe the opposite of what Obama says and you can take it to the bank.
We have truly returned (never left) the situation from the Bush II Admin. years.
As long as all a person does is watch the Corporatist "media" -TV Broadcasts and interviews by the Prez and staff, Cable "news" and "debate" programs, local news, AND the radio takshows, weekly magazines, daily papers, Internets "comment" sites, blogs, and (really most oddly) sitcoms and fictional TV programs, that feed off these- then they are living in a coherent world with logically connected events that has one tiny flaw:
It is UTTERLY false and manipulated!
What remains to be seen is:
1. Whether the cognitive dissonance between this "TV Reality" and the actual world can be maintained by a significant portion of the population. I.E., how will people be able to handle the Prez's claim that he is NOT in office for the "fat cat banker's" when a third of his actions are for their benefit (the other 2/3rds for the benefit of Insurance fat cats and MIC fat cats)? Or how will they be able to believe that they are in an "economic recovery" while they and everyone they know continues to suffer from a obvious economic contraction?
2. Whether when/if that cognitive dissonance is broken, the version of reality chosen by most will lead to constructive action or to unhelpful paths or further falling down the rabbit hole (paranoid conspiracy fears or things like electing another "Obama" form the other wing of the Corporatist Party).
In any case, this kind of utter B.S. and crazy, easily disproved lying is starting to come so fast and so loud from the Obama Admin. that I'm beginning to wonder if it really is just the standard propraganda effort to "manufacture consent". I'm starting to think that maybe this Prez is -underneath the slick image the Dems have paid for and the knee-jerk respect that he is given by many- just as straight crazy as Bush II was!
The real problem may be that if he is, he will prove to be not a -really rather typical in the U.S.- priviledged sociopath, but someone suffering froman actuall pyschosis.
-matti.
Great comments all. I think Obama is just paying attention to polling numbers and needing to sound like a populist.
He certainly wasn't worrying about the unemployed until his popularity started tanking.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Oblah blah, blah blah blah. Always the talk, never the walk
Translation from the Doublespeak:
"I was put in office by fat cat bankers to serve the interests of fat cat bankers"
Just listen to hisself: One and Half $TRILLION this year ALONE!
The big "O" is full of it. War is Peace; I have no bankers up my sleeve -it's all crap coming out of his mouth!
Read Matt Taibbi on all the Goldman-SAchs, Citibank bankers that now advise Obama;
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout/print
then add in hedge-fund folks like Emmanuel, Summers
The fact is, we don't need Goldman-Sachs, et. al. These folks won't lend people money. What they do, instead, is create too-good-to-be-true investment packages that always end up as a bubble and implode! These bonus baby/gambling casino gurus and their Nobel Prize mathematical wizard friends are having a high time figuring out how to defraud the rest of us. And the sad part is that they usually succeed. Even sadder, with our industrial base now gone, these fraudsters are the only economic game in town.
Don't give the Wall Street banksters the praise of calling them mathematical wizards. They aren't. Anybody can string a bunch of symbols together to give the appearance of a mathematical formulae. But when someone actually tries t come in and solve the mathematical puzzles these crooks put together and they amount to nothing more than a fraud, it turns out that they are nothing more than overglorified salespeople peddling a snakeoil product with nothing more than gibberish behind it.
So, even though he was a Senator, BO had no f**king idea that Frankly, the Banksters own The Place before he was picked by said Banksters to run for office?
And the entire world's press had no idea Tiger was banging bimbos worldwide nearly in broad daylight for 10+ years until he crashed his Caddy?
For Sale: 1 Brooklyn Bridge, slightly used, needs repairs.
Wow. Obama, you need to tie that bull outside. We know that you are very, very smart, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us are so very, very stupid that we can't recognize the big con when we see it in action.
"We know that you are very, very smart,...."
Speak for yourself please. There are several forms of smartness. The only Obama-smart I have observed is smart speech-making.
The Obama presidency is becoming surreal. He says he didn't run for office to help Fat Cat Bankers, but one of the first thing he does, when he becomes president is to bail them out big time.
Then he wins the (ig) Nobel Peace Prize and he gives a speech justifying war. And he does all this with a straight face.
It's getting to the point that I can't stand to watch him speak anymore, because I am so tired of being fed bullshit by him and so many of our other "elected" "leaders"...
Hmmm, this was not one of O'Bombya's finer media moments. His "fat cat bankers" quote sounds a tad like Nixon's feeble, "I am not a crook," quip. But maybe it's just a clumsy start to a full-on propaganda campaign. Hitler always said that you have to repeat the big lie again and again until the people finally believe it. Yes, yes you do.
I guess there is no fear at Goldman Sachs that O'Bombya has suddenly reversed course and changed his mind about the $1 million investment (that is, campaign contribution) O'Bombya received for Campaign 2008. There's no chance of that, I think. So far, the company that engineered collateral debt obligation trading - stuffing bad mortgages into securities and giving them AAA ratings - has done quite well. Clearly, the O'Bombya administration has done nothing to prosecute Goldman Sachs and the other banksters for this naked criminality, and won't do that. In fact, O'Bombya rewarded them. He even appointed Goldman Sachs representatives to run the U.S. Treasury. He put the foxes in charge of the chicken coop. There's no clearer picture of corporate criminality combined with Presidential malfeasance than that.
Will loyalist Dem voters remember this betrayal by Campaign 2012? Probably not. A few "good" speeches seems to wipe out their frontal lobes. They will once again believe that they have no choice from the duopoly. If you have no choice, why vote at all?
I'm not sure how an open revolt would take place - perhaps spontaneous massive tax resistance? Already things are falling inward from a burst housing bubble, healthcare bankruptcies and lost jobs. Maybe you don't need organization when you have spreading mass impoverishment. Maybe it will all just explode one day. We can only have hope.
-TIA
Pathetic jerk. But let me not slip into negativity. A friend pulled me aside recently and suggested I come up with solutions rather than my normal animousity toward these war criminals, financial criminals, politicians and the like. In light of that conversation I propose the following solutions...
#1 To get America back to work I propose the Phil Gram Incarceration Center. Designed with the intent of housing all these Ivy League educated finacial criminals such as Larry Summers, little Timmy Giether, Hank Paulson, Sir Allan Greenspan and the rest of the Goldman Sachs thugs. All construction to be done with unemployed construction workers displace by these same criminals.
#2 A wing on the Gram facility strickly dedicated to incarceration of past and present presidents that have committed war crimes like Pappy Bush for his work in the first invasion of Iraq. Billy Boy Clinton for his drive by shooting in Iraq and Kosovo. George the Lesser Bush for his work in torture and manufacturing of bogus evidence with the intent of invading a sovereign nation. And of course who can forget our current Nobel Peace Prize war criminal Banka Obombya for his escalation in the afpak war crime. Corrections enforcement and rehabilitation in this wing should be contracted out to locals like Bubba the Fudge Packer and his cousin Buck who learned the craft of torture from George the Lessers private contractors in Iraq.
#3 I propose the construction of an alternative energy production facility to employ local unemployed consrtuction workers. This facility is to be cutting edge design where a large wheel will spin an electric generator. CEO's of large corporations not limited to too big to fail banks, failed automobile companies and all CEO's that relocated their factorys to foreign countries will power this wheel (hampster style) by running in place on the wheel. Failure to run on the wheel will result in electical shocks being applied to the loins via tasers.
I'm sure there are more inovative things that can be done to get America back to work. I'm positive people displaced from their home from foreclosures, workers let go from their good paying jobs when their employer relocate the factory overseas and the pensioners that have lost ther retirements from these criminals have lots of ideas that could be implemented.
Hey, Prez, the road to hell is paved with good intentions!
Let us all shed some big tears for poor little Obama.
After reading all the comments, I want to ask each and every one of you what you are doing to change the status quo? Are any of you activists? Do you build up, or just tear down? Do you organize for real change? Or do you simply add to the atmosphere of hate? What is your purpose in this world? What are you doing to make yourself a better human being? I'm betting that none of you have done anything except bitch. Am I right?
Speak for yourself, you are jumping to conclusions with no evidence. You know nothing about it.
How do you address the collective action dilemma?
I and others have called for a general strike to shut the country down for a few days. The so-called democratic process is only a PR stunt, so we have to take it to the streets with massive non-violent civil disobedience. Of course the police will instigate violence as usual.
However, many scoff at the idea, what do you reckon?
I agree that we need massive demonstrations. One million enthusiastic people on the D.C. Mall would make a difference. The problem is that most Americans are repressed and apathetic, and they have no tradition of protest. I read recently that those who were involved in the '60s movement, who are now elders, should hit the streets again as an example to young people. However, I am convinced that those "hippies" were mostly protesting because of the draft. Weren't the majority of them college kids who didn't want to go to Vietnam? I think that the draft should be reinstated now. If it were, there would be as many demonstrations as there are college towns. The rich kids would get thumped for a change.
I agree with you that people are repressed, but Im not sure they are apathetic. There are a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum that are really mad, and looking for real change, but realize that it is not going to happen inside our current political system. When things get bad enough people WILL take to the streets. Every society has it's breaking point, including ours. We just are not (quite) there yet.
I agree with you that the draft should be reinstated, for the very reason you expressed, which is why it won't. The powers that be watch how the masses react to various situations then adjust their tactics accordingly.
I just missed out on the Vietnam war by a few years. Fortunately when I turned 18 the selective service was not even active so I couldn't/didn't even have to register for the draft. So aside from my tax dollars I have done NOTHING to support our Military Complex's wars on the peoples of the world. I'm sure some would hold that against me. So be it, I really don't care what people like that think anyway.
"When things get bad enough people WILL take to the streets." I agree; when things (material conditions) get bad enough for a critical mass of people, we can only then expect civil unrest. Many people are still too satiated with the modern version of bread and circuses.
"I agree with you that the draft should be reinstated ... Fortunately when I turned 18 the selective service was not even active ..."
so you don't know WTF you're suggesting!
Where I live I am surrounded by people who are backward and opposed to any kind of change. I am amazed at their lack of interest in anything outside of their own local scene. They care more about high school sports than they do about what goes on in Washington. This is the problem that we have to face, and right now I don't see them changing. The corporate media keeps them docile and distracted. As for being antiwar, I think that true heros are the ones who refuse to fight in unnecessary wars and go to jail if they have to. This takes real courage.
"I think that the draft should be reinstated now."
how old are you to suggest such an obscenity?
where the fuck were you in the 1960's?
kneejerkers like you piss me right off.
bring back slavery while you're reinstating the draft.
both are involuntary servitude.
Do you think that its fair that my grandson's daddy has to go to Iraq and Afghanistan for multiple tours, while wealthy college kids get a free pass? If the draft was reinstated, it would cause massive protests which would help to stop these unnecessary, evil wars. This would save lives, not expend them. You need to stop disrespecting people who disagree with you.
with respect, your grandson's daddy volunteered.
he had a free choice, just as those of us who refused both the draft and the jail - and just left.
if the unconstitutional* draft was reinstated the rich would still be able to buy their way out. just as slaves always have.
* in violation of the 13th Amendment.
Don't worry! Conscription is not coming back. It is political suicide and besides, that's why we have mercenaries.
Hey generalissimo, your reply to your own thread was way too negative. Do you just come here to bitch? Where's your practical suggestion? That's what I thought you'd contribute since you set the floor rules for the debate along those lines.
That's how you sound, by the way. And you really don't deserve an answer for being so snide and self-righteous. But let me make it real simple: there is no definitive solution, and no one person has control over when a movement actually takes off. When people are educated and ready, that's when it happens.
In terms of voting, people just have to stop supporting the duopoly. But they haven't shown signs of breaking from that pattern. Bitching about that is a good thing if it weans one person off the Demicans.
Mass civil disobedience, or something like that, sounds good. However, if that were on the horizon, people would be voting third party too, but they haven't so evolved it seems.
Alas, despite the awareness of what's going on here in the comments sections, the rest of the country is in la-la land. If you or someone else has a broadcast network, that would be a start. Otherwise, write all you want to your Congressional representative as an individual. Protest in the streets on the blue moon when one is called. But we've done that, and it didn't work.
Tag, you're it.
-TIA
Its okay to bitch IF we also do what we can to protest. Actions speak louder than words. My suggestion is that we need leaders. We need people who are good organizers, charismatic and devoted to the common good, and who never give up. We cannot have a movement without leaders. Do you know anyone who possesses these four qualities?
I think a general strike would be a great idea. I'd join it but I already checked out of the whole working for a corporation thing a little while ago.
As far as worrying about police violence goes. I think a strike where millions of people just stayed home and didn't take to the streets has a certain way of making the powers that be pretty impotent. No one to arrest, riot cops with no one to beat up. Just a workday that nobody showed up for and they just stayed at home. Then the next month, two work days that no one showed up for, and so on until we get their attention. Of course doing something like this is going to be pretty difficult in the current economic environment. Which is probably one more reason why the middle class is being squeezed.
I agree the democratic process is now a PR stunt. I once again put up a Mussolini quote that sums it up pretty well on another post in this discussion stream.
I saw that, good comments.
I didn't vote for Obama, I campaigned for third party candidates. I wrote letters to almost every democratic congress member asking them to take the pledge for peace (at a cost of a couple of hundred dollars that I didn't really have). (Kucinich was the only one who wrote back, but it was only a form letter).
What are you doing? Are you thinking that the 'democrats' are going to solve the problem? Just like the bankers are solving the banking problem? The democrats (and the republicans) are the problem. They are supposed to be acting in accordance with the constitution and protecting liberty and justice for all. And they are the ones who refuse to follow the law when it doesn't work in their favor. They are the ones allowing the elected officials to violate the constitution when they say impeachment is off the table.
Our economy is being dismantled (the final fire sale), we don't have health care, our schools are a mess where kids care more for video games than learning about community and survival, we have unjust wars, our environment is being destroyed (this is being done even if you exclude global warming), elected and corporate officials are allowed to lie, people are dying around the world because of the quest for profit.
Corruption has gotten to big to fail, the last 4 presidents are proven liars (this includes Obama). And your primary concern is if the posters are adding to the atmosphere of hate? That is the least of the problems. What you should be worrying about is the apathy, the compromise, the need to blindly support a party without ever a limit as you how low they can fall.
And for those of you who are unhappy, I hope you are writing letters, talking to people, willing to get educated and aware of issues.
Things are going to get worse, not better, and at some point we will hit the point of no return, if we haven't hit it already.
www.NotOneMore.US
To genierae,
"Do you organize for real change?" Seriously, you ask that question after the incredible grassroots groundswell that helped put "Change we can believe in" Obama in office? I suspect a lot of those "organizers" are feeling pretty duped by our president now that he has been shown to be just another supporter of the big money that really runs this country.
Maybe we can all stop "bitching" and start working on his reelection seeing all the whole "change" thing has worked out so "swimmingly" so far. It is very difficult to be giddy and upbeat when you know your political leaders are serving the rich and powerful at the averages persons, (our) peril.
As far as I can tell at this point in this countries history the average person, even organized can do little to effect the system because it is so corrupted by money. The two parties have a lock on power and they know it. Once they get into power they ignore their bases because they know their bases will never "vote for the other side".
As far as fixing this current system goes? I'll just leave it at, it is going to take things getting very bad, and then the "fix" won't be "pretty".
What am I doing to change the status quo? As much as possible we have checked out of the capitalistic system. We do our best not to support it. We have no debt, and we grow as much of our own food as we can. We do our best to conserve where ever we can, I actually fix things when they break so I buy as little new stuff as possible.
What is my purpose in the world? I really don't know for sure what it is, but I know what it's not. It's not to be a mindless little consumer that happily supports this totally corrupt duplicitous corptocracy, that now has TWO political parties doing it's bidding.
Once again I think it's time to drag out this little gem from Mussolini concerning Democratic regimes:
"Democratic regimes may be described as those under which the people are, from time to time, deluded into the belief that they exercise sovereignty, while all the time real sovereignty resides in and is exercised by other and sometimes irresponsible and secret forces. Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical, and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant."
Its better to be a thorn in someone's side, than an enabler of hate speech. I agree that this so-called democracy has never really been one. Of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, pretty much says it. I also think that there is a tipping-point at which we will have massive demonstrations, but it may take years for that to happen. In the meantime those of us who are awake, must continue rocking the boat every chance we get. But we need to throw the hate that gets us nowhere, overboard.
no
I just tear down.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Who are you to demand everyone here proves themselves to you when you don't offer your own answers to your questions?
The Innocent Bystander in Chief. "Waaaa! I didn't KNOW that when I tore up campaign finance reform while money elected me, while I helped with that bailout, when I sat on real reform, when I appointed the same banksters who created this to fix it, when I sold out on another windfall for finance in cap and trade, when I swapped healthcare reform for insurance bailout, when I had you buy all those bad mortgages so that the bankers who wrote them didn't own them any more, when I expanded highly profitable war and I refused to call out money on any of its agenda.... I didn't KNOW that money would take advantage."
He uses the bully pulpit of the presidency to tell us another incrementalist fairly tale: "This legislation brings us another important step closer to necessary, comprehensive financial reform..."
NO, IT DOES NOT. Your tiny steps on "reform" aren't doing a damn thing for us. We know it, so stop with the fairy tales of someday, someday, someday, all this looting will turn into progress for you. Stop insulting us.
Democrats have no credibility. Democarats are not change.
Republicans could be even worse. Each does the constitution derange.
How can you get a healthy politic from a cancer riddled class?
The entire money managed establishment sucks all life so hard and fast.
Each has a fabulous lifestyle to keep and millions of souls to rule
by war and theft, and strives to keep it all looking just cool.
Means of control and spin are now the highest of their arts.
A dance of deception goes on and presidents play their parts.
This highly self organized state needs enormous energe flows.
To keep the sand from collapsing as the pyramid grows.
It cannot be maintained without great human and carbon cost.
So why not reduce it now, before the entire world is lost.
Almost everything has an optimum cost and size,
To continue to push for ever more, guarantees it dies.
Only cancers qualify themselves to grow infinite,
But what kind of creature is the result?
next time lets hire a prostitute. there's honesty in
that profession. its always spelled out and you know
what your going to get before hand.