Wall Street’s resurgent prosperity frustrates its claims, and Obama’s

By Zachary A. Goldfarb,
Sunday, November 6, 2011

President Obama has called people who work on Wall Street “fat-cat bankers,” and his reelection campaign has sought to harness public frustration with Wall Street. Financial executives retort that the president’s pursuit of financial regulations is punitive and that new rules may be “holding us back.”

But both sides face an inconvenient fact: During Obama’s tenure, Wall Street has roared back, even as the broader economy has struggled.

The largest banks are larger than they were when Obama took office and are nearing the level of profits they were making before the depths of the financial crisis in 2008, according to government data.

Wall Street firms — independent companies and the securities-trading arms of banks — are doing even better. They earned more in the first 2 1/2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, industry data show.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wall-streets-resurgent-prosperity-frustrates-its-claims-and-obamas/2011/10/25/gIQAKPIosM_story.html

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

:banghead:

it would appear that Obama Inc. is hoping we just don't notice

and CONGRESS regulates bank behavior, not Obama.

Gore went on to call Congress “a wholly owned subsidiary of the financial services industry” and said that Congress is “on a leash” and noted that was not just true of “one party.”

Neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration, for instance, compelled banks to increase lending to consumers, known as “prime borrowers.” Such a step might have spurred spending and growth, although generating demand for loans may have proved difficult in the downturn.

A recent study by two professors at the University of Michigan found that banks did not significantly increase lending after being bailed out. Rather, they used taxpayer money, in part, to invest in risky securities that profited from short-term price movements. The study found that bailed-out banks increased their investment returns by nearly 10 percent as a result.

“If the goal was to support lending, it would have been sensible to require a portion of the money to support credit origination,” said Ran Duchin, one of the finance professors who completed the study. “Lending to prime consumers was not the most profitable use of their capital.”

That's exactly what my brother has been saying since 2007. Neither the Bush nor Obama administrations demanded that, in exchange for being bailed out, banks had to increase lending. BTW, my brother is an economist at the EEC in Brussels.

:(

"Neither the Bush nor Obama administrations demanded that, in exchange for being bailed out"

and the stimulus had nothing to do with banks.

Neither administration has clean hands in the matter. Bush started it and Obama continued it by appointing Geithner as Treasury Secretary. Geithner was part of the problem, not the solution.

And the stimulus was for main street not wall street.

Geithner was the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He was part of the cadre of people who enabled Wall Street to continue their predatory way of doing business. Obama appointed the fox to guard the hen house.

From Wikipedia:

"As President of the New York Fed, he served as Vice Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee. In 2006, he also became a member of the Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty. In May 2007, he worked to reduce the capital required to run a bank. In November he rejected Sanford Weill's offer to take over as Citigroup's chief executive.

In March 2008, he arranged the rescue and sale of Bear Stearns. In the same year, he played a supporting role to Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, in the decision to bail out AIG just two days after deciding not to rescue Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy. Some Wall Street CEOs subsequently expressed the opinion that decisions in which Geithner participated, especially the failure to rescue Lehman, contributed to worsening the global financial crisis."

:-(

and it had to get Republican votes

That is reality

April 17, 2009 the day Republicans voted against the stimulus

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/29/national/main4485321.shtml

Wall St watched Washington with shock and fear as the bailout package flamed out on Capital Hill. The result on Wall St was a history-making 777-point nosedive.


The financial crisis, continued to spread

"The clock is ticking," said economist Mark Zandi. "We need to have some relief very rapidly."

Zandi says the credit markets are still frozen, & Main St could feel the effects within weeks.

"I've heard from numerous businesses that they're running out of cash," Zandi said. "So that means if they don't get relief from their bankers soon, in the next few days or couple of weeks, they will be laying off workers and shutting operations."

Among 160 COMPANIES IN DANGER OF DEFAULTING over the next 12 months, according to Standards Poors are: United Airlines, General Motors; Six Flags; &Trump Entertainment Resorts.

Credit markets, whose turmoil helped feed the stock market's angst, froze up further amid the growing belief that the country is headed into a spreading credit & economic crisis.

It takes an incredible amount of fear to set off such an intense reaction on Wall Street, and the worry now is that with the $700 billion plan fate uncertain, no one knows how the financial sector hobbled by hundreds of billions of dollars in bad mortgage bets will recover.

While investors didn't believe that the plan was a panacea, and understood that it would take months for its effects to be felt, most market watchers believed it was a start toward setting the economy right after a CREDIT CRISIS THAT BEGAN MORE THAN A YEAR AGO AND THAT HAS SPREAD OVERSEAS"

But, once in office he has done very little to reign in Wall Street.

I just am amazed at the power some ascribe to POTUS when they complain about what has not happened

I go to Politico, The Hill, Roll Call everyday

The reality is there is this thing I call dumb shits and or whores called Republicans & Democrats that are pussies

http://www.google.com/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=politico+dodd-frank#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&source=hp&q=site:politico.com++dodd-frank&pbx=1&oq=site:politico.com++dodd-frank&aq=f&aqi=&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=2437l4011l1l4536l5l5l0l0l0l0l205l773l0.4.1l5l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=ec5cc25a3c06230c&biw=1338&bih=640

There is no Magic POTUS

"Representatives of the financial industry say regulations in last year’s Dodd-Frank legislation, which Obama pushed for and signed, also have crimped bank profits."

The banks are profiting from laws passed and policies implemented before Obama took office. As the article clearly states more than once.

"But many of the legislation’s most significant measures have yet to be put into place, and their ultimate effect on the bottom line remains unclear."

--------

"The president, however, has not shunned Wall Street. He has courted financial executives for campaign donations, including inviting them to a campaign gathering at the White House. He has attracted more money for his campaign and for the Democratic National Committee from financial firm employees than all of the GOP candidates combined — a total of $15.6 million."

:shrug:

"But many of the legislation’s most significant measures have yet to be put into place, and their ultimate effect on the bottom line remains unclear."

that reads like official administration CYA talk :rofl:

Your "meet the old boss" comment is not supported in any way.

And Open Secrets has refuted the old "he's gotten more money from Wall Street than Republicans" lie a hundred different times a hundred different ways.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=433&topic_id=811612
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/assets_c/2011/10/FinanceMoneyOct2011-6738.html

"Compensation at these firms also has bounced back. Financial firms paid about $20.8 billion in bonuses for work done in 2010, according to research by the New York state comptroller. In New York City, the average Wall Street salary last year grew 16.1 percent, to $361,330, which is more than five times the average salary of a private-sector worker in the city.

By contrast, millions of Americans continue to face economic difficulties. That is fueling broad public anger at Wall Street and has given rise to the “Occupy” protest movements nationwide."

Money talks and money is something that all politicians need to get elected and then reelected. The only difference I see is that the Republicans openly support Wall Street, while the Democrats hypocritically give lip service to condemning corporate greed on one hand and simultaneously taking their money on the other hand. The result is the same though, big banks continue to have obscene profits while the nation poor rolls continue to grow.

;(

Just read what Goldman Sachs did to Greece.

;-)

http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/elections/2010/national/Outside_groups_helped_GOP_secure_big_wins-106653488.html

"A tightly coordinated effort by outside Republican groups, spearheaded by Karl Rove & fueled by tens of millions of dollars in contributions from Wall Street hedge fund moguls & other wealthy donors, helped secure big GOP midterm victories.

Leading the GOP spending pack was American Crossroads & Crossroads GPS — both of which were co-founded by two former aides in the Bush White House: Rove,& Ed Gillespie.

Together, the groups spent more than $38 million on attack ads & campaign mailings against Democrats, according to figures compiled by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign spending in congressional races.

A substantial portion of Crossroads GPS’ money came from a small circle of extremely wealthy Wall Street hedge fund & private equity moguls. These donors have been bitterly opposed to a proposal by congressional Democrats — & d endorsed by the Obama administration — to increase the tax rates on compensation that hedge funds pay their partners (15%)."

And here is the quid pro quo

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-republicans-quietly-tried-to-dismantle-dodd-frank-this-week-2011-3


Hedge fund manager John Paulson made $4 billion in 2007 naked shorting credit default swaps Goldman Sachs structured to fail

http://www.businessinsider.com/john-paulson-is-one-of-john-boehners-biggest-donors-wall-street-2011-7

"The majority of the cash was handed over in June, when the House and various committees were voting to slash the budgets of the of Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau."

“There's class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.” Warren Buffett