By Tom Eley, 15 December 2009
Obama’s Monday meeting with top finance CEOs, presented as a means of promoting lending to small business, in fact aimed to placate popular anger over the Wall Street bailout.
The stated aim of the gathering of Wall Street bankers at a private White House meeting with President Barack Obama on Monday was to cajole the nation’s largest financial institutions into offering loans to cash-starved businesses and consumers.
In reality, the event was a media exercise designed to placate growing popular anger toward the Obama administration. The true nature of the event was not lost on its attendees. “It’s a PR [public relations] stunt,” an unnamed CEO flatly told Time magazine prior to the meeting.
Attending were Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Ken Lewis of Bank of America, Richard Fairbank of Capital One, Bob Kelly of Bank of New York Mellon, Ken Chenault of American Express, and Ron Logue of State Street Bank. Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, John Mack of Morgan Stanley, and Dick Parsons of Citigroup joined the meeting via video conference.
The nation’s biggest banks will soon hand out year-end executive bonuses totalling in the tens of billions. This conspicuous display of bank prosperity comes just over one year after the US Treasury and Federal Reserve began to funnel trillions of dollars to the finance industry. This ensured that the banks would profit from the economic crisis that they precipitated through rampant financial speculation.
The vast majority of the population continues to suffer through the nation’s worst social crisis since the Great Depression. One in six workers is without a job or underemployed. For those who have work, speed-up and pay and benefit cuts are the rule. The foreclosure crisis continues. Hunger is at a record high. The destruction of the social safety system by cash-strapped states is accelerating, and the Obama administration is readying years of budget austerity to right the US fiscal crisis at the expense of the working class.
Appearing on the CBS news program “60 Minutes” on Sunday evening, Obama acknowledged the anger. Referring to the Wall Street financiers as “fat cat bankers,” Obama noted, “They’re still puzzled why is it that people are mad at the banks.”
“Well, let’s see,” Obama continued, “you guys are drawing down 10, 20 million dollar bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it’s gone through in decades, and you guys caused the problem. And we’ve got 10 percent unemployment.”
Obama did not mention that this is an outcome of the policies of his own administration, which has overseen the Wall Street baillout and has explicitely campaigned to oppose any measure that would curb executive pay. Meanwhile, it has spearheaded the attack on workers’ pay, including through the forced bankrupcy of General Motors and Chrysler.
Monday’s meeting comes nine months after a similar meeting at the White House in March. Then, Obama pledged not to take any measures that would impinge on the interests of the financial oligarchy. Bank of America’s Lewis said at the time that he was confident that no “punitive” actions would be taken after the “pleasant” meeting. (See “Obama holds ‘very pleasant’ meeting with top US bankers”) (1)
While the media had predicted that Obama’s criticisms on “60 Minutes” meant he would shame the executives or give them a “dressing down” on Monday, by all accounts the meeting was likewise as pleasant as it was unsubstantial. No transcripts of the discussion have been released.
Richard Davis, CEO of US Bancorp, told the media “there wasn’t a lot of disagreement.” “He didn’t call us any names,” Davis said, referring to Obama’s “fat cat” reference on “60 Minutes.”
Note:
1. http://wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/bank-m28.shtml
More: http://wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/bank-d15.shtml
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