President Obama to press top bankers
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A day after he unfavorably compared them to obese felines, President Obama will meet with a group of Wall Street executives today, pushing to get their help in moving the economy forward.
“What the president’s going to say to the bankers is: you guys were part of the problem, you helped create an economic crisis here that has cost 7 million Americans their jobs, and now you have to be part of the solution,” senior White House adviser David Axelrod said on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America.’
“People are not going to tolerate a situation where the bankers have a party, they pick up the tab and then the bankers pay themselves huge bonuses and they’re not lending,” he added.
Attacking bankers is a time-honored tradition in the United States (not to mention throughout Western history.) Even Thomas Jefferson cautioned against greedy bankers, and it was the leftist balladeer, Woody Guthrie, who warned that some men rob “with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen.”
According to month’s Gallup annual poll on how professionals are seen, about one in five Americans said good things about bankers, down sharply from a few years ago.
With national unemployment floating at 10%, not counting those who have dropped out of the job search or have been forced to take part-time jobs, it is hardly surprising that bankers’ popularity has been falling. Repayment of federal bailout money so that Wall Street executives can be free of government limits on pay and bonuses hasn’t helped the image either.
President Obama weighed in Sunday night.
“I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street,” Obama told CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
Basically, Obama wants the bankers to help free up credit to small business and home buyers as a gesture of the importance of the now-politically unpopular $700 billion financial bailout.
Among those at today’s meeting with a dozen executives will be Dick Parsons, chairman of Citigroup; Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs; and John Mack, chairman and chief executive of Morgan Stanley. [Updated at 8:35 a.m.: The trio attended by telephone because of inclement weather.]
-- Michael Muskal
