What is there about 50% real increases in equity values over less than 3 ½ years that is not to like?
A big part of it, I think, is that Obama was not just supposed to make things better: he was supposed to fix things–to bring things back to “normal”. Things are certainly not back to normal for America’s workers. And, while things are pretty much back to their mid-2000s normal for equity investors–an S&P of 1400 compared to 1500 in the summer of 2007–that is definitely not the case for financials.
Investors in Bank of America have lost 75% of their wealth as of the summer of 2007. Investors in Morgan Stanley have lost 70% of their wealth as of the summer of 2007. Investors in Citigroup have lost 93% of their wealth as of the summer of 2007. If you were working for those organizations and had taken your pay in options–well, whatever bonuses you have gotten since the crisis started are almost surely much smaller than the losses you have taken on your options portfolio.
Obama did not fix things: Wall Street bankers today are a lot poorer than they were in mid-2007. And the Wall Street bankers think that Obama disses them. And the Wall Street bankers know that Obama wants to tax them.
If the Wall Street toffs don’t love the Prez, it’s no surprise that the CIA spooks and goons aren’t so hot on him either, despite the fact that 1) he’s unofficially pronounced all of the hideous crimes of the Bush era to be non-crimes and 2) he lets them snatch and murder pretty much anyone they damn please all around the globe. Do you think they’re grateful? Think again.
“I cannot tell you how disgusted my former colleagues and I felt to hear ourselves labeled ‘torturers’ by the president of the United States,” says Jose “Jose the Torturer” Rodriguez in his book, Hard Measures, according to a write up in the Associated Press.
Rodriguez is a hero in his own eyes for destroying tapes of CIA officers waterboarding suspected terrorists, which is not torture unless done to Americans by someone who isn’t an American. According to the AP, Jose claims that he got rid of the “ugly visuals” because if they ever became public, CIA officials around the world would be in danger. In other words, if people knew the truth about the CIA, they wouldn’t like the CIA.
Rodriguez will never understand how proud he is of being just like “the enemy.” Like Al Qaeda, he isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty. People want results. Well, he gets results.† Or at least he would if no one knew what he was doing. If only he had unlimited power, and could wield it in absolute secrecy! Kind of like Obama’s drone program!
Update
Glenn Greenwald has much more about gangsta Jose.
*Sorry my epithets are so lame this morning. For some reason, modern-day equivalents “malefactors of great wealth,” and “economic royalists” are just not rolling off my tongue. Feel free to insert “coupon-clipping shitheads” in my copy whenever appropriate.
†Of course, what Rodriguez really wants is to be a bad ass, to inflict grievous bodily harm on helpless human beings and then congratulate himself on being a patriot. Enjoy your pension, big shot. And your royalties. You should be in jail.
