Yeah yeah, I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it as long as I have to. Obama has a choice to make.
After business leaders sank millions into the midterms to defeat Democrats, a chastened Obama administration is seeking reconciliation with the corporate community.
But after two years of building frustration, the executives say they won’t be won over by another round of private lunches and photo opportunities at the White House.
If President Barack Obama has any hope for a truce with corporate America in time for his 2012 reelection campaign, he needs to drop the name-calling, try to see their point of view better and step up with some specific proposals [...]
“We have to see some concrete policies that will help grow business because everyone’s goal is to grow jobs. This isn’t hocus-pocus. There are concrete steps to take for job growth,” she added.
Reality:
Investors around the world say President Barack Obama is bad for the bottom line, even though U.S. corporations are on track for the biggest earnings growth in 22 years and the stock market is headed for its best back-to- back annual gains since 2004.
Reality:
American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or non-inflation-adjusted terms.
Corporate profits have been going gangbusters for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history.
There's no job growth because corporations aren't reinvesting their massive profits into new hires. That's not Obama's problem, that's Wall Street's and the business community's problem.
Fact is, voters didn't see Democrats as any different than Republicans on dealing with Wall Street, so they voted on social and irrelevant issues (like earmarks). That's why we got results like these a few weeks ago:
There's no reason that people upset with Wall Street should be voting Republican. None. But as long as Obama begs these assholes to like him, populist-minded voters will see Obama playing footsie with Wall Street, as opposed to fighting to hold them accountable for their excesses. And all that pathetic groveling at the hands of these corporatist assholes is self-defeating anyway. They're not going to embrace him. They can get so much more from Republicans, so they'll spend four times what they did this year to destroy him in 2012.
So I'll keep saying it -- either Obama starts siding with Main Street and tells these Wall Street assholes to go fuck themselves, or he'll be a one-term president.