I am not sure I agree with the title but I definitely agree with the substance of the article:

But most importantly, he came into office amidst sweeping crises in the financial sector and did not do what needed to be done, and what had been done the last time the U.S. was sent careening into a depression because of Wall Street: he failed to push for tough financial reforms. Barack Obama needed to be the FDR figure who remade the American capital markets and made them fair again, and he barely laid a finger on the whole scene.

Instead, he put the people who created the problem in charge of fixing the mess, and ended up bailing them out instead of the rest of the country, at huge current and (presumably) future cost.The total bill for the Bush-Obama bailout is certainly above ten trillion at this point — Inspector General Neil Barofsky thinks it might hit nearly $24 trillion ultimately — and this went through without much fanfare. Meanwhile, the congress is stuck in the mud, panicked at the thought of paying three or four trillion over a decade or so for a health care program.

None of this is new news. What is new is the question of what to do about it. I’m personally of the opinion that our main problem lay with the fact that the Democratic Party as currently constituted is more afraid of losing the financial support of Wall Street and the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry than it is of losing progressive voters. In fact, I think I’ve put that wrong, because it implies that the Democratic Party pushes the agenda of industry insiders out of fear. That is a misread of the situation, I think.

I think they prefer those people to their voters. I think they feel more comfortable with them. I heard a story recently from a Democratic Party operative who tells me that certain members of one of the president’s cabinet departments only got wind of how hard it is out there for ordinary people to pay their bills when they invited in a major corporation to give them a presentation about their financial outlook for the holiday season — and through that report found out that this company’s prospective customers were spending less because large numbers of them had been laid off, or had huge medical bills, or had maxed out their credit, and so on.

Pres. Obama reportedly raised almost $2 million this past week at a Wall Street fundraiser. Nice chunk of change for someone who should be fighting for us. Oh yeah, what do politicians say about corporate special interest donations? I think they say it doesn't influence their decisions.

Sure. Tell that to all your middle class constituents when they are flat broke and living in tent cities because of the next crisis that you failed to prevent because you were more interested in protecting your contributors instead of your constituents.

RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.