....are wrong. There, I said it. I've been listening to all these guys all day and all I hear is that somehow the car companies are being treated differently than Wall Street. I hear blue collar workers are getting the shaft and Wall Street is being treated with kid gloves. I'm calling bullshit because I don't want my side to do the same stupid thing the morons on the conservative side do all the time....make up facts to fit their own agenda.
(more rant below the fold)
When you hear Wall Street is being treated with kid gloves, think about the thousands of employees that worked for Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch. I'm not talking CEO's here, I'm talking secretaries, administrative assistants, clerks and everyone else below the V.P. level, non-unionized workers that got shown the door with no real notice. These people had homes and families and bills to pay too but where is the sobbing for the non-union Wall Street worker who had nothing to do with the financial crisis? It has been a jobs blood bath on Wall Street for the average worker and there have been no offers of government bailouts to keep these people employed. The bailouts go to shore up balance sheets or bonus the big boys or buy expensive office remodels or to line the pockets of anti-union politicians. No one is worrying about what the collateral damage is when all these thousands of people lose their job and the cascading effect this has on their surrounding communities. What do you think this has done to the restaurants, copy shops, bodegas and every other small business surrounding Wall Street? Think they might be hurting too? All the worries go to the auto suppliers if the auto companies fold but the car companies are not unique when it comes to the domino effect.
I hear bitching because the GM CEO got canned but the bank CEO's still have their jobs. Again I say, check your facts. Vikram Pandit wasn't running Citigroup a year ago. Edward Liddy wasn't running AIG a year ago. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have all new management teams. John Thain, the CEO of Merrill Lynch, seems to be unemployed and hunted by AG Cuomo these days.
You think these guys aren't paying a price but the president of Brazil stated this weekend (and I paraphrase) "This entire global economic meltdown was caused by white men with blue eyes" and the only people seriously up in arms about this comment are white men with blue eyes and CNBC (same difference). I don't see the employees and CEO's of the car companies being treated to near universal derision such as this. Don't think this will end soon....despite valiant efforts from the right to blame this entire fiasco on brown people trying to buy houses, the world knows who the criminals are in this mess and don't think they will forget it soon.
So pretend like Obama has some sort of double standard here but understand what he already knows....Wall Street banks can live without the car companies but like it or not, the car companies can't live without Wall Street banks.
Without a banking system, we ALL lose....and yes, once the system has stabilized, I'd like to start seeing a lot more Wall Street perp walks but the time for that is not now.