In an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, President Obama, has abandoned his short-lived populist attack on the banksters, and showed that he was quite serious when he said in his State of the Union address that he has "no interest in punishing the banks." Asked about the multi-million dollar bonuses being awarded Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Obama said
I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen . . . I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.
First, I think the President is reading the American people wrong when it comes to the wealth of the banksters, which is amassed through usury, speculation, and economic rent, and not through any productive contribution to society.
The financial system is sucking the life blood out of the real economy - and making obscene profits doing it.
The financial system does not even do what it's supposed to do - provide financing to companies producing and distributing the things we need and want.
As a result, the U.S. economy as a whole has been operating below break-even - productive plant and equipment and physical infrastructure has been and is wearing out at a faster rate than the U.S. economy replaces and rebuilds it. In any sane nation, this would be seen as economic suicide. In the United States, however, it is seen as evidence of "savvy businessmen" at work.
To say that anyone connected with Wall Street is a "savvy businessman" is an indication that the person speaking either has no idea of how the financial parasite is killing the economic host - or is willfully lying on behalf of the financial parasite.
In fact, in the financial parasite has loaded the economic host with more debt in the past twenty years than has been created in the entire history of mankind, creating a new form of human slavery - modern debt peonage.
That our President just doesn't get it is so, so sad, the only thing we have left to do is laugh about it:
But, seriously, we have a big, BIG problem on our hands. Our President is ignorant of how the basic facts of how the financial system is killing our economy. Here's part of what Simon Johnson wrote this morning at Baseline Scenario:
. . . we have built a dangerous financial system in Europe and the U.S., and 2009 made it more dangerous.
* The fiscal impact of the financial crisis was to increase by around 30-40 percent points our federal government debt held by the private sector. The extent of our current contingent liability, arising from the failure to deal with "too big to fail" financial institutions, is of the same order of magnitude.
* Our financial leaders have learnt that they can bet the bank, and, when the gamble fails, they can keep their jobs and most of their wealth. Not only have the remaining major financial institutions asserted and proved that they are too big to fail, but they have also demonstrated that no one in the executive or legislative branches is currently willing to take on their economic and political power.
* The take-away for the survivors at big banks is clear: We do well in the upturn and even better after financial crises, so why fear a new cycle of excessive risk-taking?
If we don't turn this around, we're going to be in worse, and worse trouble. But the really scary effects go beyond the financial system. As William Black explained in How the Servant Became a Predator: Finance's Five Fatal Flaws:
The U.S. real economy suffers from critical shortages of employees with strong mathematical, engineering, and scientific backgrounds. Graduates in these three fields all too frequently choose careers in finance rather than the real economy because the financial sector provides far greater executive compensation. Individuals with these quantitative backgrounds work overwhelmingly in devising the kinds of financial models that were important contributors to the financial crisis. We take people that could be conducting the research & development work essential to the success of our real economy (including its success in becoming sustainable) and put them instead in financial sector activities where, because of that sector's perverse incentives, they further damage both the financial sector and the real economy.
There can be no excusing the President for this. There is no defense for this. The future is being destroyed, now, and the President must wake up to the brutal reality that its' America versus Wall Street.