Greed Is Not Good!

30 January 2009 |permalink | email article

Wall Street, the 1987 film in which Michael Douglas played the unscrupulous corporate raider Gordon Gekko who said “greed is good,” became an archetypal portrayal of 1980s excesses.

In the real world the band played on through the presidencies of B41, C42 and B43 when greed ruled and deregulation was gold.

But Thursday an angry President Obama, from the Oval Office, fired a warning shot at Wall Street, called bankers “shameful” for giving themselves $18.4 billion in bonuses as the economy continued to collapse and the government was spending billions to bail out some of the nation’s most prominent financial firms.

Despite a Republican shutout in the House against the economic stimulus the Wednesday vote was a victory for Obama as the debate moves to the Senate next week. The hope among a coalition of liberal groups is that an ad campaign will encourage moderate GOP solons to favor it. with modifications

With a 70% approval rating and a majority of Americans supporting the need to do something, Obama is determined to push ahead and woo the party opposite even though some Democrats think he needs to refresh his base.

With John Boehner trying to duck a reputation as minority House leader of the “party of no,” minority Senate leader Mitch McConnell calls for finding voters who’ve left the GOP and the need to revive its dismal standing.

This is a predominantly white party with a growing identity crisis, more consumed with more tax cuts instead of creating jobs for millions of unemployed workers.

An NBC/WSJ December poll showed that only 27% of the nation viewed the GOP favorably, compared to 49% about the Democrats.

Quote

Let’s cut taxes as I want, and spend more, as Obama would like. – Paraphrasing Rush Limbaugh, the GOP talker-in-chief, calling for a bipartisan stimulus in The Wall Street Journal while criticizing government intervention. Go figure!

 

 

 

 

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