The Power of Plutocratic Pettiness
March 18, 2012, 3:26 PM
The Power of Plutocratic Pettiness
Via Rich Yeselson, Alec MacGillis has a fantastic piece in the New Republic (unfortunately paywalled) about how hedge fund managers love for Obama has turned into blind, spitting hatred. His main argument is that its all about feeling disrespected:
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/101726/obama-wall-street-donors-campaign-finance-tax
Masters of the universe rarely get much guff in their daily routine: The guy at the top, the name on the door who raises all the money and makes the big decisions: Hows that guy treated? How many times does someone tell that guy that he might not be a good guy, that, you know, youre kind of a dick? These guys are not used to getting dinged at all. And it wasnt just anyone knocking themit was the president of the United States, notes Eugene Fama, a legendary finance professor at the University of Chicago and Asnesss former mentor. Lots of (hedge fund managers) started out poor, and made a huge amount of money, and created thousands and thousands of jobs in the process. Theyre used to being the American Dream, and now you have the president who looks at them and sneers at them like theyre bad guys.
For all the brashness and bravado that goes with their world, it seems the managers are oddly insecure about their purpose. For years, most people in the financial service sector were viewed with enormous, out-of-the-box respect and adulation, says Daley. These guys were on pedestals, and now that pedestals gone, and now, in a lot of peoples minds, the industry doesnt have that glow, and that bothers them, and now they join that with the president and his theoretically bashing the wealthy. Theyve got to blame somebody, and they blame him because he is representative of that group of people who arent us. Former Official B told me, Whether its (former Fed Chairman Paul) Volcker saying theres been no financial innovation worth a shit since the ATM or the president saying his thing, theyre hypersensitive. Former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank was more scathing: They dont just want us to represent their interest, they want to be told that what they do is very good. They want to be honored for what they do for society. And Obama has hurt their feelings. Raising their taxes is not simply a blow to their income. It is a blow to their psychic income, a failure to recognize the enormous good they do for the world.
And now Obama says what anyone paying attention would: that these big-money people were, to some extent, making their money in socially destructive ways and they go insane, precisely because in their hearts they know that hes right.
And because money talks in politics, this pettiness, this display of ego and hurt vanity, may have disastrous consequences.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/the-power-of-plutocratic-pettiness/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto