Wall Street Playing the Victim

WASHINGTON — If the Democratic Party has a stronghold on Wall Street, it is JPMorgan Chase. Its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is a friend of President Obama’s from Chicago, a frequent White House guest and a big Democratic donor. Its vice chairman, William M. Daley, a former Clinton administration cabinet official and Obama transition adviser, comes from Chicago’s Democratic dynasty.

But this year Chase’s political action committee is sending the Democrats a pointed message. While it has contributed to some individual Democrats and state organizations, it has rebuffed solicitations from the national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees. Instead, it gave $30,000 to their Republican counterparts.
The shift reflects the hard political edge to the industry’s campaign to thwart Mr. Obama’s proposals for tighter financial regulations.

In a Message to Democrats, Wall St. Sends Cash to G.O.P.

Here we go again. The folks on Wall Street are determined to prove to all of us that they just don't get it. If they think they're getting a tongue lashing from the President then I would suggest they stay off Main Street. There they might just encounter a lynch mob.

Kelly King is a board member of the Financial Services , which lobbies for the biggest banks. He says, “I understand the public outcry. “We have a 17 percent real unemployment rate, people are hurting, and they want to see punishment. But the political rhetoric just incites more animosity and gets people riled up.”

I can assure you that it's not the President's rhetoric that's inciting the animosity. It's people's declining net worth that is riling them up. Wall Street seems to live in this bubble where they get to thinking that all the money they play with every day is theirs. Somehow they feel that they are entitled to use it as they see fit. Now, when we want them regulated to protect ourselves from their greed they have the gall to cry foul.

I'm sure all those bankers would be quick to tell you that nobody was complaining when they were taking in record profits for their share holders. Once again, Wall Street just doesn't understand that all Americans are not shareholders in their companies. Lower income America had no stake in the shell game the banks were playing, other than they were unwittingly duped into bogus mortgages, yet they're the ones who are being punished the most by the bailout. Like they can afford it.


“I am a big fan of the president,” said Thomas R. Nides, a prominent Democrat who is also a Morgan Stanley executive and chairman of a major Wall Street trade group, the Securities and Financial Markets Association. “But even if you are a big fan, when you are the piñata at the party, it doesn’t really feel good." How does Mr. Nides think the rest of America feels? One might want to argue that Wall Street has been suffering from the recession as well, but in the same breath they want to pay out huge bonuses.


Where does Wall Street get off acting like they've been injured when they've been bailed out? For years people have begrudgingly been customers of financial institutions. They've tolerated draconian lending practices, outrageous fees and sleazy, underhanded, small print riddled bullshit for as long as time can remember. Why, because they have no real choice in the matter. Don't we pay enough just on that front? Then they have the nerve to come back and ask us to bail them out. I can't imagine how you could begin to defend giving huge bonuses to the same people who screwed us in the first place. It doesn't take a PHD or a Series 7 license to figure out that this is an outrage. It's not at all hard to understand why there is such anger on Main Street. The President is merely echoing public sentiment. So, if you follow the Wall Street logic their greed is not to blame. They are simply poor victims like the rest of us. That's like saying Jeffery Dahmer didn't do anything wrong. He was merely hungry. I still think we should have let them fail.