He plucked William Daley from the American Chamber of Commerce to become his Chief of Staff.
Daley recently scolded politicians for calling for the prosecution of Wall Street criminals. He said that job belongs to producers in Hollywood, not lawmakers.
These efforts have emboldened other arms of Wall Street to intervene in politics. The most visible last week was the statement by the ratings agency Standard and Poors that it was revising the country's credit rating as "negative," warning that will consider lowering the long term rating of the United States "within two years"
Many stocks fell, but bond markets ignored it. Former International Monetary Fund economist Simon Johnson raised questions about their decision of a kind absent in most media outlets.
Writing on his website Baseline Scenario, he noted that few outlets pointed out how inaccurate the ratiings agencies had been at the height of the crisis, and how irresponsibly they hyped worthless bonds packed with sub prime junk. Yet once again they were treated as credible despite sloppy analysis.
The main problem is that S&P did not lay out even the most basic numbers or even point readers towards the nonpartisan and definitive Congressional Budget Office analysis of medium- and longer-term budget issues. This matters, because the CBO numbers definitely do not show debt exploding upwards immediately from today ..."
Bloggers like Cannonfire go further arguing that "The revised credit rating is meant to push the administration and lawmakers into going after Social Security and Medicare. The right-wing now has an additional propaganda tool to push for draconian cuts in areas that will most hurt working and middle class Americans.
Here's the kicker: Standard and Poors and Moody's are private firms. They don't work for the United States; they serve the interest of Wall Street banks. 2008 taught us that they are completely unaccountable."
Doug Smith adds on the influential Naked Capitalism blog that Wall Streed should know that joining the Tea Party Jihad on government spending will be counterproductive for economic recovery.
"We know the banksters control both parties and are immune from any threats to their bonuses or their liberty. Still, even on the banksters' own terms of extend-and-pretend, these cuts are idiotic"
Despite all of its frauds and deceptions, Wall Street has bought its way out of the many pressures that it change its ways. In a special issue. New York Magazine concludes that in this economic war, "Wall Street Won."
Their editors write, "In the political realm, Wall Street faced the prospect of root-and-branch reregulation, up to and including the potential nationalization of the industry's largest players, and in the cultural realm its transfiguration into a kind of pariah state. Once upon a time, the Street's leading lights had been glamorized and admired to the point of worship; now the likes of Robert Rubin, Lloyd Blankfein, and Richard Fuld were relentlessly pilloried and demonized....
Yet today on Wall Street, all of that seems a very long time ago. Not only are the banks rolling in dough again, but their denizens' customs and sense of self-esteem have largely reverted to the status quo ante."
A retired, well-known journalist, James Clay Miller, notes that media coverage of these issues adds to the confusion because it is often superficial and misleading.
"Corporate media refuse to tell many of the stories of bank fraud, as they decline to tell many of the stories that would show the public the corporate takeover of government, but the facts are available to those who recognize that they won't learn much of importance from CNN."
The public is not just uninformed; it is unorganized on these issues and not fighting back. The power of the bank lobby can be compared to the pro-Israel lobby in the sense it dominates the discourse on this issue.
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