No Surprises Yet from Wall Street's President

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By Mark Crispin Miller (about the author) Page 1 of 3 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Mark Crispin Miller - Writer

It sure is "horrifying"--to use Paul Krugman's word--that Obama will not seize
those foundering banks, but is instead proposing to blow billions of our money on their toxic assets, far in excess of the latters' worth.

It's horrifying, but it shouldn't be surprising, considering Wall Street's long investment in Barack Obama.

Way back in the spring of 2007, that presidential hopeful outdid all the other candidates at raising money from the employees of Wall Street's top investment banks:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/17/AR2007041701688.html

By June of 2008, the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) was noting that "Wall Street seems to have selected Barack Obama for its own major investment this election cycle":

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/06/wall-street-bets-on-obama-for.html

And here's a fascinating tidbit about one bank in particular: UBS, the Swiss behemoth that lost billions when that huge stink-bomb of subprime mortgages exploded. "For reasons noone can fathom, UBS of Switzerland decided that it had a larger appetite for mortgage-related instruments than any other bank in the world," reported MSN.com three weeks before Election
Day. "Its balance sheet became obese with the junk and forced it to take what seemed like a write-off a week. UBS has fired so many people that it is surprising it still has someone to man the switchboard."

http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/2008/10/16/ubs-crisis-global-bank-trouble-is-getting-worse.aspx

So it's worth noting here that Team Obama got over $1 million from UBS Americas, whose top dog was quite smitten by the candidate when they sat down to chat: "When I sat down with him, I found him to be unbelievably refreshing and smart and thoughtful," gushed CEO Robert Wolf:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2008/db20080212_645487.htm

(Last month, Wolf was appointed to the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, to lend a hand to Geithner, Summers and the other "centrists" tasked with cleaning up the very mess they helped to make.)

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So here's another reason why Barack Obama won the last election--aside from his charisma, the absurd opposing ticket, the unprecedented turnout, and the extraordinary vigilance of the election monitors (and, as I and others have reported in detail, the last-minute deposition of Mike Connell, and Karl Rove's consequent decision not to steal that contest, too).

Obama/Biden also won because Wall Street was now pushing for the Democrats to win the White House, which marked a big reversal of their prior practice. Thus Obama was a candidate of "change"--and so was Hillary Clinton, the two of them receiving most of the Big Money poured forth in that race (the most expensive presidential contest ever run).

According to the CRP, the top campaign donor corporation in 2008--that is, the biggest donor to all candidates--was Goldman Sachs (at least $5 million), followed by Citigroup ($4.2 million), then J.P. Morgan Chase ($4.1 million). The industry association that donated most was the National Association of Realtors ($3.2 million):

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/10/us-election-will-cost-53-billi.html

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