Thursday, October 20, 2011
Occupy this: President Obama's Wall Street fundraising
Interesting fact of the day:
Despite frosty relations with the titans of Wall Street, President Obama has still managed to raise far more money this year from the financial and banking sector than Mitt Romney or any other Republican presidential candidate, according to new fundraising data...
Obama has brought in more money from employees of banks, hedge funds and other financial service companies than all of the GOP candidates combined, according to a Washington Post analysis of contribution data. (bold emphasis added)
Commentary
At this point, Wall Streeters really do not like Barack Obama. It has been a long time since I have met one who still actually supports him. But the extent of the pain of Dodd-Frank depends on regulations that have yet to be written by executive branch agencies that report to the White House. The big financial firms know that their future profitability requires that President Obama influence those regulations, and he is exploiting that for all it is worth.
This, loyal readers, is "regulatory capture" in action.
Not that anybody from the "Occupy" movement or the New York Times will look at it that way.
10 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Oct 20, 08:19:00 AM:
Protection Money. That is what community organizers do.
By , at
Thu Oct 20, 09:36:00 AM:
From the ABC News website:
Apr 3, 2009 6:17pm
Obama to Bankers: I’m Standing ‘Between You and the Pitchforks’
Link: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/04/obama-to-banker/
By 
TigerHawk, at
Thu Oct 20, 09:38:00 AM:
Right. A lucrative place to be. And lining up more pitchforks in an election year is very helpful.
Supplementing the post, I think the money coming from private equity dudes is also to influence the result on the tax treatment of "carried interest."
By , at
Thu Oct 20, 10:00:00 AM:
Not only "carried interest" but the death tax provisions that allow private equity folks ( and Buffett...) to buy businesses at a discount when the founder dies.
By Georg Felis, at
Thu Oct 20, 10:23:00 AM:
I notice how carefully you avoided the word "Extortion"
By Jim MIller, at
Thu Oct 20, 11:56:00 AM:
What I'm still hoping you'll do some time is explain why these Wall Street guys were for him in the first place.
Did they ignore his record? His associates?
By , at
Thu Oct 20, 03:25:00 PM:
My two cents is that most big businesses give money to both parties with the major contributions going to the strong horse.
I think the writing was on the wall that no Republican was going to win the White House in the last election.
It seems logical that big business doesn't care who is in office as long as they have access or influence for their monetary support.
After Obama they may be rethinking their strategy.
By Ed Driscoll, at
Thu Oct 20, 07:41:00 PM:
"What I'm still hoping you'll do some time is explain why these Wall Street guys were for him in the first place."
Kevin D. Williamson of National Review did a pretty good job of exploring that topic in March of 2009.
Short answer: Wall Street dug what they perceived as Obama's moderate stance on social issues, and had flashbacks to Bill Clinton, forgetting Bill's disastrous first two years before the GOP recaptured both houses of Congress.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Fri Oct 21, 09:54:00 PM:
OWS should be focused on Obama on two counts: more moolah, and duping them into thinking he was the opposite.
They won't though. They'll fall back onto "Yeah, both parties do it (but we're furious at only one and merely wagging our finger at the other.)"
That falling for the right rhetoric without underlying action is not a liberal thing, but human nature. Republicans reluctantly vote for Lucy Van Pelt's who have pulled the "small government" football away a hundred times. Blacks wince and vote for Democrats that they have to know are going to screw them again, because they at least say the right things. We're all like eager young women who want to be told lies before we hop into bed.
Or is that reference dated now?
By , at
Fri Oct 21, 10:07:00 PM:
On my visit to Zuccotti park and talking to the protestors, they blamed President Obama, too. They cast him as a Manchurian candidate corporate stooge.
