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Obama to Meet Friday With Top Bank CEOs
President Barack Obama plans to meet with about a dozen of the U.S.’s top banking chiefs in an unusual gathering designed to discuss the administration’s plans to shore up the financial sector. Attendees are expected to include Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup. The meeting comes as relations between Washington and Wall Street are frayed following last week’s furor over bonuses paid to American International Group employees.
This is like a U.S. President sitting down with the James Younger Gang or Al Capone, or Bernie Madoff. It gives the imprimatur of the U.S. Presidency and the aura of respectability that implies, to some of the the worst white-collar thugs in our nation’s history.
I think this meeting also confirms just how much prestige has already been drained from the office of the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. These guys are tight as thieves with Summers and Geithner, who have zero credibility.
Instead of tarnishing the Obama Administration and the reputation of all future U.S. Presidents, these guys should be in orange talking to their lawyers through glass partitions.
I sure hope someone has a less negative interpretation of this.
7 Comments
I completely sympathize with your frustration, but I want to have faith that Obama has seen enough of the world, plus he’s spending parts of his day worrying about Iraq and the military (and how to pay for them), plus so many other issues that although the bankster will come to the meeting thinking that they have the ‘upper hand’, this time Obama probably has more power in the negotiations.
If he can let most of their bullshit flow off like water from a duck; they need him, and I suspect they know it or they wouldn’t be agreeing to this meeting. (They probably think that they still have the upper hand but I doubt that’s true; Obama has the clout this round.)
Who knows what will happen?
But George W Bush would not have had the brains, nor the spine, to hold a meeting like this; and to highlight the Obama/Bush contrast, a meeting like this is also in character with Obama’s stated goal of making DC more civil.
I think we’ve all become so innured to constant hubbub and hourly news updates of hysteria that we’ve kind of forgotten that in many places, tough people who want results are able to sit down with people they may not agree with and knock out a list of topics to discuss. This had become a lost art under the Reign of Error that was Bush. But this is a critical skillset that’s long overdue for a revival in American life — political, personal, and business.
Obama’s simply doing what any other competent leader does: sit down with people, be civil, and make some progress on shared goals.
I have no idea what will come of this, but I’ll say this much — damn, it’s a breath of fresh air!
I think the banksters don’t yet grasp how much the political calculus has changed. They think that they have the upper hand because they still have money.
OTOH, it’s my view that Obama has the upper hand because if the American public could get up close to those Wall Streeters right now, they’d end up spit upon, and perhaps worse.
If I were a bankster, I’d be praying for Obama to calm a whole lot of people down, and I’d be willing to make concessions for more civil, calm social outcomes.
So we’ll find out soon enough…
RoTL, thanks very much.
Maybe he will tell them time’s up
That’s my hope.
But he can’t do it without some kind of new regulatory power and actual enforcement. The public is definitely ready.
In a very tiny anecdotal ‘tea leaf’, last fall after the first round of TARP, I went by a branch of my bank and made some comment to the bank employee at the window about all the bailouts; I wasn’t rude, but I was probably pretty snotty and scoffing – largely about Paulson’s 3-Page Edict (”You cannot know about anything that I do!”)
The person at the window didn’t have anyone behind me, so we had a quick chat and I was intrigued to learn that branch had a number of new customers that week — BofA customers who were too pissed about the bailout to keep their accounts with that bank.
I assume that was a fairly quick, one-shot burst of new customers for my bank, and it may have been limited. But it sure caught my attention as in interesting little sign of the times.
All the signs that I see suggest that Obama’s definitely got the upper hand, although I’m sure the banksters think otherwise. I figure it’s a ‘rock, scissors, paper’ dynamic. This time, his scissors are going to outrank their paper – yippeeeeeeeeee!!!
Obama worked on Wall Street as a junior analyst after Columbia U. and before returning to Chicago to work as a community organizer, and before he went to law school. He used to work for these guys or their predecessors. He was junior to them in status until he became a senator from IL, when they started coming to him. Now he’s there boss, but he has more in common with them than he does with us.
I agree that Summers especially, but Geithner too, are wholly compromised. Bush wasn’t bright enough to run the office he won, so Cheney did it for him. Obama is more than bright enough, but he’s not much for daring.
“relations between Washington and Wall Street”
Ummm. what? The banksters now constitute a sovereign country? Our government has to have formal diplomatic “relations” with ‘em? If they are a sovereign country dedicated to destroying western civilization, can’t we just go to war with ‘em and do some shock an’ awe?
I don’t think “change” means what Obama thinks it means.